Firefox 3.5 is out | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 3.5 is out

mozilla.com

234 pointsptn71 comments

Argh. I want to love Firefox 3.5. Really, I do. Modern web standards. Faster. Smaller memory footprint. Native Aqua widgets (effing _finally_).

The problem is, compared to Chrome and Safari, it's a dog.

I've been running the nightly (Shiretoko) for weeks now, and, like everyone else, I'm hopelessly addicted to various extensions during heavy browsing sessions (development, etc).. but when I want to pop up a browser, check something quickly, and move on with my life, Safari is the browser of choice. The initial launch speed and JS performance are orders of magnitude faster.

Gecko is a great layout engine, but my gut feeling is that XUL and friends are holding it back. Agree? Disagree?

It's even worse on Linux. FF performance on Ubuntu/Gnome was pretty bad. Starting up, scrolling and even window resizing made me feel like I was using a Pentium II. I want back to OSX+Safari. I only fire up FF when I need Firebug.

On the other hand, FF on Windows is blazing fast. So I doubt it's just XUL.

Edit: wow, they did Safari-like pixel-precise touchpad scrolling (OSX). Very nice.

Same here, I've been running the Firefox 3.5 RC's on my Gentoo x86 system for a few days now, and it just keeps crashing, at least once every 5 minutes. Opera, even the 10.00 Unite Alpha (which is what I'm using), is just so much faster and stable.

I've been using Firefox 3.5 and it's fast and hasn't crashed at all unlike Opera which crashed every once in a while here on Ubuntu Karmic.

I haven't worked in a Windows-based environment in a while, but I do recall in the Fx 2.x days that it was significantly faster on Windows. Perhaps this is just a case of Mozilla catering to the largest audience.

If that's the case, then I applaud the effort, as getting the masses moved from IE[6/7/8] to Firefox 3.5 is certainly a more valuable effort than besting Safari performance on Mac OS X. There's just a big part of me that hopes they can achieve both. :-)

I've been running firefox 3.5 release candidates for the past couple weeks, and its been pretty fast and it hasn't crashed at all

I run FF on Debian (iceweasel), and it is acceptably snappy, but there is a bit of a trick to this:

1. Every extension you add seems to decrease performance by 30-50% (rough numbers) [1]. So live with a bare essential set of extensions. For me that is Firebug and FlashBlock.

2. Keeping very many bookmarks or history items seems to destroy performance, particularly with the "awesome bar." I disable history completely and have it clear everything else on browser close.

Before I settled on this FF usage technique, FF would degrade in performance over the course of months as it built up data in the profile. Eventually it would become unusable [2] until I deleted the profile and started fresh. Now I just prevent it from building up any data.

[1] As much as I used to like this extension, my experience has been that ForecastFox in particular hammers browser performance.

[2] It would take seconds, sometimes 10 or more, to open a new tab to about:blank. With this technique though, I currently have ~ 25 tabs open, and new tab creation is instantaneous.

Or you could just run Firefox completely in RAM in Linux, as I do:

http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/05/speed-up-firefox-by-moun...

It's fairly easy. There's a guide just for Ubuntu, too:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=991205

I wish the OS was smart enough to do this automatically. I have 16GB of RAM on my workstation, and rarely use more than 8GB.

> Keeping very many bookmarks or history items seems to destroy performance...

Amen to that. I have ~12,000 bookmarks, and FF3 on Windows takes ~10 seconds to both start up and shut down.

Why would you have that many bookmarks? Trying to make search engines obsolete?

> Why would you have that many bookmarks?

Why shouldn't I? Firefox 2 handled it fine.

It is exactly the same with chrome. I used to love it until it ended up being a dog in performance. I honestly thought it was because I started using the dev builds - slow debug logging?

BUT, I clear everything but saved passwords every month or so. It goes back to being snappy right away. You don't get those results even with a new install as it doesn't delete old data.

I think the chrome team must have known this. In the clear history dialog it lets you clear only "last week", month, etc which is perfect. I wish they would automate that though.

Interesting. I'm writing this using Iceweasel 3.0.9 on Debian testing (Squeeze/Sid) on an IBM T60 Thinkpad, 2Ghz dual-core, 2GB of RAM. I currently have 8 add-ons installed and a large amount of favourites and history saved. My profile is quite old and I never clear my history or have to do any special tending to keep performance at a constant.

Iceweasel is slower to start than would be ideal, really it's always been so but certain add-ons definitely seem to affect start-up time. But I've never experienced any of these more extreme issues that I hear a large number of people reporting. Nor have I experienced these kinds of issues on any of my other machines (running Windows XP and OS X Leopard on these machines and their resources were/are similar to or better than my T60). I wonder why this is? Is it because I'm not running Iceweasel/FF on a single core machine with < 1GB of RAM?

For the people who are having issues with Iceweasel/FF, what are the resources on your machines like? I totally believe you guys that these issues exist, I've read too many reports to doubt them all, I just wonder why I've never experienced them.

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/browser-benchmarks-2-even-wi...

You close your web browser?

Edit: Was this downmodded by people who actually close their browser during the day? Those that don't should up-mod it.

You were likely downmodded because a one-line question question doesn't really add to the discussion. Also, telling people to upmod your comment just because they do something you do isn't helping you.

It's a valid question. The browser is the gateway to most of the applications I use in a day. Closing it down would be like shutting down my computer whenever I step away from it.

I don't disagree that applications (and operating systems) should start up quickly, but it hardly seems like a critical complaint. And, as much as I appreciate improved Javascript performance, the differences are not that significant in the real-world.

You don't necessarily up/down people on HN because you agree or disagree with them. It's about contributing to discussion.

Sadly, asking questions is apparently considered "not contributing". Very friendly.

It depends on the question. The parent poster obviously closes his browser, otherwise load time wouldn't matter for him.

Furthermore, your question calls for a yes/no answer, which is hardly contributing to the conversation.

As for the why he closes the browser, I don't know. Maybe RAM scarcity... But it isn't wonderfully interesting to have that kind of anecdotal conversations here.

If I want the RAM back, yes. FF bloats overnight, as well.

I use the "Boss Key" extension (press a key and hides the window). This hides the current window, but not future windows. If I click the Firefox icon again, it comes up as fast as opening a new window.

Some rough figures:

  IE7: 0% (base, 1x)
  IE8: 24% faster (1.24x)
  FF3: 73% faster (1.73x)
  FF3.5: 183% faster (2.83x)
  Opera 10: 196% faster (2.96x)
  Chrome 2: 354% faster (4.54x)
  Safari 4: 427% faster (5.27x)

Personally I use Safari because I prefer WebKit (it being fast is nice too), but I'm very impressed with Firefox 3.5. It makes a very good development environment with all the extensions available for it! :)

What are you using to arrive at those numbers? SunSpider, Dromaeo, some other benchmark?

Peacekeeper: http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper

As I said, it's very rough, but seems to be a good indication of where abouts browsers are in comparison to each other.

Though, once you get to a certain point (around 2x IE7, I'd say), it becomes irrelevant to 99% of what you'd want to do. Or should I say, irrelevant of what you can do, while slow browsers still have high market-shares...

I agree with your perception - most of the modern browsers are just fine at this point.

I've been skeptical of Peacekeeper, though - the tests may be fine but it's hard to tell since they haven't released the source of them, at all. I'm not even really sure how to determine if/how improvements could be made. As far as I know, none of the major browser vendors use Peacekeeper as a benchmark for their engines (which is really what a good benchmark should strive for: to push for the improvement of the browsers that it measures).

Here's a short python script to optimize your firefox databases: http://pastebin.com/m155f9e6e

Close firefox, run it, be amazed. People have been claiming phenomenal speed boosts (mostly if your profile has aged a bit).

find ~/.mozilla/ -iname '*.sqlite' -exec sqlite3 {} 'vacuum;' \;

I thought their new stats page was really cool:

http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/

Anyone know what SQLStream (the software Mozilla is using for the stats page) costs? Their web site doesn't say and it looks very "enterprise-y" so I'm guessing lots.

Bah, the release notes link gives me a 404... here is the cached version of the RC release notes from last week...

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:P21aJ836YuQJ:www.mozilla...

EDIT: A much better list... https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers

EDIT#2: The What's New page that loads after installing also 404's...

(Figured a third edit might be inappropriate.)

Aside from TraceMonkey and the new Gecko, my favorite new feature (in theory) is probably the DNS Prefetching:

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Controlling_DNS_prefetching

I say in theory because I haven't run any objective tests, but, subjectively, things do seem to load a bit faster.

the new firefox is pretty fast and the new tab design looks good. I think I'll pause google chrome for a few days.

update: if you have issues with old addons in firefox 3.5, John Resig suggests you to do the following: Open about:config, right-click new boolean 'extensions.checkCompatibility', set false, restart. (via http://twitter.com/jeresig/status/2404695608)

I read that somewhere else. When I went to look for that setting, I couldn't find it. I'm on Mac OS X.

you have to add it. right click when in about:config to add a new entry.

Thank you.

I'm still running Ubuntu 8.10, anyone get the release running there yet and want to share how they did it? Ideally I'd like to avoid trashing my old 3.0.11 install or profile...

I have to run various versions of Firefox for testing purposes. What I've done is to download the binary from their homepage and then run them with the appropriate command line:

    /path/to/firefox2 -no-remote -P ff2

    /path/to/firefox3 -no-remote -P ff3

-no-remote allows me to run separate profiles at the same time, -P specifies a profile name. So they don't run updates on, or ruin the other profile.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments

Here's what I did (using andyn's method):

Download the linux version of firefox 3.5 from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=...

Untar and unzip firefox-3.5.tar.bz2:

  tar xjf firefox-3.5.tar.bz2

Move the new firefox 3.5 directory to /usr/lib:

  sudo mv ./firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.5

Create a shell script to run firefox using andyn's params. Create a file (I called it firefox.sh) in /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/ with the following contents:

  #!/bin/bash
  /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox -no-remote -P <profile_name>

Note: Substitude <profile_name> with whatever you want to call your Firefox 3.5 profile; just make sure when prompted at first-run you create a new profile with the same name.

Make the shell script executable:

  sudo chmod u+x /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox.sh

Simlink the shell script into the /usr/bin dir, or somewhere on your path:

  sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox.sh /usr/bin/firefox3.5

Run the script from the command line using:

  firefox3.5

Enjoy!

For those of you who want 'firefox' to run 3.5 with your current 3.0 profile, you can do the following:

  tar xjvf firefox-3.5.tar.bz2
  sudo mv ./firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.5
  cd /usr/bin
  sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/firefox firefox-3.5
  sudo rm -f firefox
  sudo ln -s firefox-3.5 firefox

You can run 3.0 by using 'firefox-3.0', which should already exist.

Since installing 3.5RC and even upgrading to 3.5 my login state for sites hasn't been respected by FF. I have to log back into every site I visit every time I restart firefox - anyone have any suggestions as to what I can try to fix this? Cookies are on, passwords are stored and I'm not in privacy mode.

Private Browsing !!!

yeah.. but when I hit Ctrl-Shift-P It just overrides the current window ! And I have to hit that again to the public firefox browser. !

That just seems weird ! Atleast thats what the default does

what the freck happened to using cmd/ctrl + arrows to organize the tabs?? i usually have dozens of tabs opened and i used that feature to prioritize them! now they took it away and it's frecking annoying

It feels a lot faster, at least on Mac OS X. The interface seems to be much more responsive as well. It's nice to see they have focused on performance :)

I didn't notice any difference. Seems to take as much to start and is still noticeably slower than Safari.

Seems to use much less memory though.

I tried out the <video> tag on the 3.5 About page, but it still uses Flash. I thought the whole point was to go native and avoid Flash?

Not sure what your issue is. I checked the Tour Firefox 3.5 video, and it worked like a charm, no flash req'd.

I right-clicked on the video and it says 'Flash 11'.

Is it possible that if Flash isn't present, it shows it natively using Firefox?

What page are you talking about?

It uses the video tag as default, but also provides a Flash fallback for when it's not available. This means it works in all the browsers.

The Acid3 test page is currently down. Coincidence?

Great, 4 of the top spots taken up by Firefox, PHP, Wireshark, and Virtualbox release notes. I know we've had this debate before, but I don't see why anyone wants 15% of their news to be release notes. If I care about these projects (and I do), I'll subscribe to a related RSS feed or mailing list. The only possible benefit I see is some useful discussion about new features, but honestly that's hardley enough benefit to compensate.

I've only seen the volume of release notes go up in the past month. I don't think we should reward the people that post them with karma. That will just encourage newer users to post more release notes for more and more tangentially related products. I wouldn't be suprised to see some scripts pop up that automatically post release notes of significant projects (as we've seen in the past with pg's essays). Heck, even if we restricted outselves to release notes of software used by YC companies, we'd still be overwhelmed.

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but honestly we can do better.

EDIT: For those claiming that they are in it for the dicussion, point me to any useful discussion so far in any of the 4 mentioned stories. As of this writing I count 2 or 3 useful comments, and maybe 1 useful discussion. So I don't buy it. Rephrasing the release notes certainly doesn't count.

Firefox: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680853

Virtualbox: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680692

PHP: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680649

Wireshark: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680286

Well, these tools are essential to many hackers, so the posts are definitely relevant to HN. IMO, it makes much more sense to view all such news in a central location (i.e., HN), rather than subscribing to individual projects' RSS feeds, where one would also be notified of developmental releases.

I can count over 100 tools essential to many hackers. The *nix userland alone is certainly several hundred. How about the release notes for all the languages we use? Or perhapes the editors and IDEs?

Also, if you want one central location, I suggest an RSS reader. And if you're worried about volume, many readers have filter functionality as well.

Yeah, but the HN community follows the development of browsers, internet software etc., with special attention. So it is essential that we discuss our thoughts about the software that matters to us most.

Wouldn't it make more sense then to have a post about a specific new feature/change/bug of the software in question, rather than a general announcement?

The general announcement provides a page on which we can start threaded discussions on specific features, which can be quite useful, especially since many of the features significantly impact one another.

That would make tsally's problem worse, since every significant new feature would have a spot on HN, rather than having all related features grouped under a few spots.

I can count over 100 tools essential to many hackers.

So can I, but few come to my mind as swiftly as Firefox. It (with the aid of Firebug) is an invaluable tool for hacking on web sites. I know several people (including myself) who use it for that very purpose even if they do not use it as their primary browser.

Firefox definitely stands out among the crowd of myriad hacker tools.

Shouldn't your central location be your rss reader? Most of the projects you mention have low-traffic announce feeds that only post on release.

You are basically demanding that a scarce public resource (HN front page) be used up to satisfy a need you could take care of on your own.

It's kind of humbling to see the tragedy of the commons playing out so clearly here.

Perhaps I'm unusual, but I find the dicussion is often as interesting as the link (perhaps not for this item :-). And you don't get that on an announcements RSS feed.

It is not just "my" need that is being satisfied. Clearly, at least 73 (the current number of votes) other hackers find this information (and like yangyang said, a place to converse about it) useful. The "scarce public resource" is being used in the way that would satisfy the needs of the largest number of hackers.

That said, you needn't worry about HN being polluted with release notes. It just so happened that several major pieces of software had releases today. This is most definitely not a daily occurrence.

I'm pleased to see this Firefox story, and the VirtualBox one, because I use both pieces of software and I'm interested in the opinions and discussions of other HN users, because such conversations are often intelligent and useful.

The way you feel about new software releases taking up the top spots on HN? That's the way I feel about comments arguing that something doesn't belong on HN.

Comments aren't even comparable to stories in terms of signal to noise ratio. Also, I'm not happy about the fact that I violated the guidelines, but I felt it necessary.

If you don't like it, flag it.

It IS an unpopular opinion, because whining is always unpopular.

I downvoted your comment. It is not well reasoned, or even properly contrary. It's whiny and weak. Please don't do this again.

I prefer to see these articles. Apparently 40 or so people agree with me as of writing this comment. I'm not "rewarding these users with karma", I'm expressing my desire to be alerted of new Firefox versions when I check HN.

I downvoted your comment. It is not well reasoned, or even properly contrary. It's whiny and weak. Please don't do this again.

Obviously I don't believe my comment is whiny and weak, but I'll take whiny and weak over condescending and abrasive any day. Whatever makes you think you deserve to talk about my opinions in such a way, you haven't earned it. It's also not what this site is about.

I will say however, in the spirit of your comment, I've removed the part about downvoting.

How about we limit it to 1000 application/utility/developer notification to 1 Celebrity passing away notification?

And honestly - Firefox, Wireshark, PHP, Virtualbox are pretty important, do not get released frequently, and the _only_ place I heard about them being released (and I"m a major news junkie) was at HN.

Would you believe me if I told you that I seemed to have note of MJ's death on other web sites (and we still felt it necessary to post it here as well)

Techcrunch, who _specializes_ in discussing App Launches didn't mention these four (that I could see, they might be buried somewhere) primarily because they are more hacker related, and don't apply to their general audience.

Let's not get too hyper critical here on HN like some editors do on Wikipedia and decide that the only relevant content that should be posted is that which meets our own approval, and realize that there is a broad hacker community for whom the release of Firefox, Virtualbox, PHP and Wireshark should all be important events.

We're certainly on the same page with some of the celebrity stuff.

I also agree with you that they are important to the broader hacker community. I'm just convinced that the volume of important events will become overwhelming if trends continue. It is not my intention to minimize the importance of the software.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com