Skip to content

Firefox 3 Speedups

After much delay, Mozilla finally made the first beta release of Firefox 3. I was extremely unhappy with Firefox 2 when it was first released because of memory leaks and bloat. I felt that the developers put much more effort into the Windows version than the Linux or Mac OS X versions and my thoughts are shared by others.

Firefox

Firefox 3 on the other hand is extremely fast on Linux, especially one heavy AJAX sites! The release notes claim that “over 300 memory leak [were fixed]” and it surely feels like it. There have been many other feature improvements but the speedups are most significant for me. It’s a good sign that, even in beta, Firefox 3 is noticeably faster than version 2, at it will have to be faster in order to try and close Safari’s increasing speed gap.

    None Found
  • http://www.thinkbeta.com/blog Hank Feeser

    As you are aware Luke, I’m running XP under Parallels running under OS X 10.5.1. I tried FF3B1 in this XP and did not find any noticeable improvement in speed. What i did notice, is a bunch of busted plugins :-)

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    Yea, FF2 was known to be slow on Linux and many bloggers (and probably others, though not publicizing it) were annoyed by this. Windows was definitely their target for v.2. I’m excited this isn’t the case for v.3 but it doesn’t mean I’m ready to switch just yet. I’ll wait for the plugins

  • http://www.thinkbeta.com/blog Hank Feeser

    As you are aware Luke, I’m running XP under Parallels running
    under OS X 10.5.1. I tried FF3B1 in this XP and did not find any
    noticeable improvement in speed. What i did notice, is a bunch of
    busted plugins :-)

  • http://www.thinkbeta.com/blog Hank Feeser

    As you are aware Luke, I’m running XP under Parallels running
    under OS X 10.5.1. I tried FF3B1 in this XP and did not find any
    noticeable improvement in speed. What i did notice, is a bunch of
    busted plugins :-)

  • http://lukehoersten.com/ Luke Hoersten

    Yea, FF2 was known to be slow on Linux and many bloggers (and probably others, though not publicizing it) were annoyed by this. Windows was definitely their target for v.2. I’m excited this isn’t the case for v.3 but it doesn’t mean I’m ready to switch just yet. I’ll wait for the plugins ;-) .

  • http://lukehoersten.com/ Luke Hoersten

    Yea, FF2 was known to be slow on Linux and many bloggers (and probably others, though not publicizing it) were annoyed by this. Windows was definitely their target for v.2. I’m excited this isn’t the case for v.3 but it doesn’t mean I’m ready to switch just yet. I’ll wait for the plugins ;-) .

  • http://humani.st Luke Hoersten

    Yea, FF2 was known to be slow on Linux and many bloggers (and probably others, though not publicizing it) were annoyed by this. Windows was definitely their target for v.2. I’m excited this isn’t the case for v.3 but it doesn’t mean I’m ready to switch just yet. I’ll wait for the plugins