News - Firefox 9 released, speeds up browser by up to 30%

[HEXUS]

Officially released tomorrow, but available to download today.

Read more.

[watercooled]

And yet I'm still on 3.6 which seems faster to start/load pages and has a much better interface (IMO), I've even downgraded a system I was using the latest release on. Firefox has really gone downhill since this release spamming IMO.

[Fraz]

Yeah, I despair at Firefox these days. The only thing that keeps me using it is the inertia of finding out how to do everything I want in either Opera or Chrome.

Thunderbird is going the same way. I turned my back for a proverbial minute and ~5 new major versions came out whilst I wasn't looking. As far as I can tell, the only major difference is that the new versions are way less reliable than version 3.1.X

[simonpreston]

Farewell FF8. We hardly knew ye.

[Ross1]

I have been loving firefox since 6/7ish. its been ****ing perfect for months now, kinda dont want anything to change.

[watercooled]

I've been running Iron (Chromium) alongside FF for a while now and I've gotten used to it - quite a good way to do so IMO. It is a terrible memory hog vs Firefox 3.6 though, definitely something to consider if you have a load of tabs open like me. You can run it in single-threaded mode which does help a lot but last time I tried, add-ons including Flash wouldn't work (they need a separate thread).

[Hicks12]

Hate how Firefox changed GUI to be pretty damn similar to chrome... im beginning to dislike chrome as it seems to have problems with sites like Hexus and my Universities webpage, when using drop down boxes it seems to struggle loading them half the time (stupidly annoying).

Opera maybe one to try again, if not IE .

[Scribe]

Hate how Firefox changed GUI to be pretty damn similar to chrome... im beginning to dislike chrome as it seems to have problems with sites like Hexus and my Universities webpage, when using drop down boxes it seems to struggle loading them half the time (stupidly annoying).

Opera maybe one to try again, if not IE .

Can't say I've seen the same issue! What OS and Chrome version are you on, an example page?

[watercooled]

I've noticed that myself, some scripting seems to work properly only on Firefox but it's not necessarily Chrome's fault.

[miniyazz]

I just wish Chrome had better tab handling. Multi-row tabs is an excellent feature on FF with Tab Mix Plus.
Also Noscript seems to be missing from amongst Chrome's add-ons.

[awsm]

Hate how Firefox changed GUI to be pretty damn similar to chrome... im beginning to dislike chrome as it seems to have problems with sites like Hexus and my Universities webpage, when using drop down boxes it seems to struggle loading them half the time (stupidly annoying).

Opera maybe one to try again, if not IE .

The GUI is far more like Opera than Chrome. But I digress I dumped Firefox at v4 for Chrome then Chrome for Chromium. With Raven & Safari (Mac) as my backup browsers.

[sweey]

Here we go again. When is 10 out? January? 11 in March? Hmm...16 by 2013?

I too have Iron on the go in conjunction as I'm seriously looking at switching now.

[brasco]

Here we go again. When is 10 out? January? 11 in March? Hmm...16 by 2013?

I too have Iron on the go in conjunction as I'm seriously looking at switching now.

lol is it really that much of a problem!? It's less than 2 mins to update it, and for a better experience that surely can't hurt.

brasc

[watercooled]

Yes, with new features come bugs. Past versions of FF have remained at a stable release for some time (3.6 for instance) and the minor versions are only bug fixes - no new features are added in major releases to keep the software stable and secure. Now they're just releasing new versions for the heck of it, it gives me much less confidence in the correctness/maturity of the code and I can't take it as seriously as I did before. It seems they don't care about the quality of the software they're releasing any more, just adding features ASAP to try to keep users rather than planning ahead and aiming to make a solid browser.

And as for a better experience, I haven't noticed all that much difference between 4 and 8/9/10/11 (whatever it's on by the time I post this). Funny how Chrome taking over FF coincides with this release spamming. Look at this graph bearing in mind FF4 was released March 2011...

[brasco]

Fair enough, that's your view of it. I've just come back to ff from chrome with my tail between my legs, I just didn't get on with it, and for some reason the memory usage ballooned with only a few tabs up.
My argument is also pointing out that it's a browser, for browsing the net, have we not got to a feature saturation point? I'd rather they just improve what's there already.
Doesn't the quicker release mean they can react to changes better and improve it faster, the code's already solid.

brasc

[spoon_]

And yet I'm still on 3.6 which seems faster to start/load pages and has a much better interface (IMO), I've even downgraded a system I was using the latest release on. Firefox has really gone downhill since this release spamming IMO.

Totally agree with you buddy on this one. 3.6.24 seems the version to have. Anything released after that was pure thrash, completely don't get where they're going with this versioning nonsense...

Incremental versions anyone? Seems like version 9 should have been 3.9...