Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#1

Post by melling » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 1:05 AM UTC

Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0
zdnet.com

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#2

Post by willvarfar » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 1:17 AM UTC

The title made me imagine it was between Firefox and V8

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#3

Post by dchest » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 1:52 AM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #2

The title made me imagine it was between Firefox and V8

http://arewefastyet.com/

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#4

Post by ceol » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:20 AM UTC

Did Mozilla just pad their version number? Last I remember, there was Firefox 4 Beta. Why is it at 8 now?

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#5

Post by zachwill » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:21 AM UTC

In my opinion, Mozilla should have put more effort into seamless background updates before starting their 6-week release cycles. (Unleash the fanboys...)

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#6

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:23 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #4

Did Mozilla just pad their version number? Last I remember, there was Firefox 4 Beta. Why is it at 8 now?

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#7

Post by asadotzler » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:24 AM UTC

Firefox 8 is light years ahead of 3.6 in performance and memory usage. It's light-weight and blazing fast. If you've been away for a while, delete your old Firefox profile and re-import your setting. You'll be surprised at how much better Firefox is.

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#8

Post by jaredsohn » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:30 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #4

Did Mozilla just pad their version number? Last I remember, there was Firefox 4 Beta. Why is it at 8 now?

They are now on a six-week release cycle, just like Chrome.

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#9

Post by asadotzler » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:30 AM UTC

zachwill wrote: post #5

In my opinion, Mozilla should have put more effort into seamless background updates before starting their 6-week release cycles. (Unleash the fanboys...)

I'm the Director of the Firefox Desktop product (I wasn't at the time of the move to the new release cadence) and I agree with you 100%. We've been busting our butts for the last couple of months to get our updates ironed out and smooth. We've already shipped some of this in Firefox, including not nagging users to restart, killing the "What's New" tab that would interrupt your start-up, and reducing the number of incompatible add-ons by helping users get rid of add-ons they never requested (add-ons that were sneakily installed without user consent.)

We've got "install add-ons in the background" code finished and in testing. We've got "bypass the UAC prompts" code finished and in testing. We've got add-ons defaulting to compatible with a blacklist for broken ones (reversing from a default to incompatible with a whitelist) coded and it's in testing. We'll be shipping these in Firefox 10 and 11 so the remaining bits are going to arrive very early in the new year.

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#10

Post by zobzu » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:37 AM UTC

zachwill wrote: post #5

In my opinion, Mozilla should have put more effort into seamless background updates before starting their 6-week release cycles. (Unleash the fanboys...)

I'm a Firefox user and I agree with you. Now, it's not horrible, but it should have been handled better. They might have lost the battle to Chrome in the long run just because of that.

(as Chrome has several advantages such as TV ads, billboards ads, included with all major software and often without an easy way to opt-out, ads on all major websites including the most major one, various lock-in attempts with major sites supporting stuff only Chrome provides, etc, while Firefox's advantage was just being there first)

Note that it's the above that makes me stick with Firefox - and also that lately it's been actually better than Chrome in many areas.