Firefox 3.5 brings the world's second-most popular browser up to speed with current browsing technology and trends, and perhaps nudges it just a bit ahead of the competition. However, it is by no means the leap ahead that its predecessor Firefox 3 was, and it's clear that the competition isn't going away anytime soon.
Available for Windows, Windows Portable, Mac, or Linux, Firefox 3.5 nevertheless represents the best Firefox we've yet seen from Mozilla. This comes as no surprise, and with a testing process that involved four beta builds, three release candidates, and a version change to reflect what Mozilla described as the originally-unintended breadth of the improvements being made, most of the new features are no surprise, either.
Private Browsing, known to IE users as InPrivate, Chrome users as Incognito, and Safari users as, well, Private Browsing, finally comes to a public version of Firefox. It's been available to the 800,000 or so beta testers since December 2008. If you're not familiar with it, users can toggle on or off the browser's history, cookies, and other browsing traces at will via the Tools menu or CTRL+SHFT+P. A new window will open. Among its other uses that serve as fodder for second-rate comedians, it's an excellent tool for avoiding leaving tracks on publicly-used computers and its about time that Firefox finally got it. In fact, Firefox has had it in various stages of development for four years.
I'm not sure how connected Firefox's development of Private Browsing is to this next feature, but I can see far more users gaining traction from having the fine, granular control of browsing tracks that's now available in v3.5. The Clear Private Data window has been replaced by a Clear Recent History option, using the same hot key combo and in the same place in the Tools menu.
Under the Clear Recent History window, you can delete your entire recent browsing history over the past hour, two hours, four hours, today, or all content in your history. From its Details drop-down menu, you can tailor the data purge to Browsing and Download history, Form and Search history, Cookies, Cache, Active Logins, Site Preferences, and Saved Sessions. From within the History window, you can also right-click on a site to Forget this Site, which will remove all instances of that site from your history records. Because your Most Recent Sites folder pulls from your history, you gain this level of control there, too.
Another excellent improvement in v3.5 that pushes Firefox ahead of its competitors is aggressive developer support. This may not sound impressive to most users, and if you're not a developer, I can see why its hard to get worked up about support for CSS media tags, HTML5 local storage, downloadable fonts, Web worker thread, and native JSON support, or SVG transforms--it all sounds a bit too much like alphabet soup.
Firefox 3.5 comes with geo-locating turned on, so it always knows where you are (with your permission.)
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)However, embedded ICC profiles, and support for Ogg Vorbis and Theora video and audio means that image colors will look better and closer to how they were intended, and no plug-in will be required for properly-encoded multimedia. Since Vorbis is open-source, this will lend those formats a huge boost while rendering those pages more stable. Here's an example video from Firefox that offers a tour of the new browser, or you can check out this sample from Daily Motion. Non-Firefox users will either see the Flash version (as on Daily Motion), or be directed to download the OGV file.
The "awesome bar" that debuted in Firefox 3 has become one of my favorite features. I've personalized my browser to eliminate the search bar, and now I use the location bar for all my searching. In v3.5, Mozilla has improved the search functionality so that you can show only bookmarks, by using an asterisk after a query such as "cnet *", or show only tags by using a plus "cnet +".
You can also tear off tabs as you can in the Webkit-based browsers Chrome, Safari, and IE, although unlike those browsers, Firefox's tabs are not sandboxed. This means that, if the browser crashes, you're still hosed, although Mozilla says this feature--known in development as Electrolysis--is being worked on.
In the meantime, Mozilla has imported better session control that users could only get before from add-ons like Session Manager. Now, if Firefox crashes, you get the option to choose which tabs to revive. If a Flash-based or heavy JavaScript site was the cause of that crash, you don't need to bring back that particular tab and risk getting caught in a crash-and-restart cycle of frustration.
Firefox 3.5 natively supports HTML5 and embedded Ogg video content.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Mozilla abandoned development of its own geolocating technology in Firefox, but that doesn't mean that Firefox 3.5 doesn't possess the ability to know where you are. Using Google's tech, Firefox can pinpoint where you are so that in search queries, for example, you'll get the most locally relevant results first. Turning this off isn't difficult, either. Under about:config, search for "geo.enabled" and change True to False by double-clicking on it.
Performance has always been one of the keys to browser popularity, and much of Google's success with Chrome can be attributed to its fast JavaScript rendering marks. The resurgent interest in Safari also comes from its JavaScript benchmarks and Apple's claim that Safari is the fastest browser on the market with its Nitro JavaScript engine. Firefox 3.5 doesn't beat them on the JavaScript front, but it's within shooting range.
On a Lenovo T400 laptop with a Core 2 Duo T9400 processor running at 2.53 GHz, with 3 GB of RAM and Windows 7 RC 7100, I ran the SunSpider JavaScript test and Dromaeo's subset of JavaScript tests on Firefox 3.0.11, Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 2, and Safari 4. As much as I like Opera as an all-in-one browser, I left it out because Opera 9.6 hasn't stood up well to the improvements that the field has made in the past year, and Opera 10 beta isn't ready to be compared to public releases at this point. Remember that for SunSpider the lower number is better, while the opposite is true of Dromaeo.
Firefox users can now rip tabs off into new windows, or drag them back into the old one. Still no sandboxing, though.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Firefox 3.0.11 completed SunSpider in 2695.4 milliseconds, and 44.22 runs per second, while Firefox 3.5 notched 1319.6 ms on SunSpider and 91.18 runs/s. This falls in line with Mozilla's published benchmarks of 3669 ms for Firefox 3 versus 1524 ms for Firefox 3.5. In both "official" numbers and in my own tests, Firefox 3.5 comes out around twice as fast for JavaScript.
Meanwhile, Chrome 2 hit 322.1 runs/s on Dromaeo and 712.2 ms on SunSpider. Either way, Chrome is significantly faster than Firefox for JavaScript, one-third faster judging by SunSpider and twice as fast by Dromaeo. Safari 4 scored 915.6 on SunSpider and 239.02 runs/s on Dromaeo, slightly slower than the its Webkit cousin Chrome but still faster than Firefox. Internet Explorer marked 4434.6 ms in SunSpider, but crashed on Dromaeo while testing base 64 encoding and decoding.
Firefox 3.5 is around twice as fast as Firefox 3. Chrome and Safari are faster with JavaScript, though.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)It's important to note that speed is not the only criterion for judging a decent browser. Each browser only had open two tabs, the results of its Dromaeo test and the results of its Safari test. Safari consumed nearly 135 MB of RAM, IE saw 104 MB, Firefox 3.5 hit 66 MB, and Chrome logged 46.5 MB. These results will fluctuate depending on your computer and any other tasks your browser is running at the time, but they give a decent idea of how each browser is performing during these tests.
Other useful tests look at Web standards rendering, like the Acid3, and deeper analysis of the SunSpider results. Chrome and Safari both reach 100/100 on the Acid3 test, while Firefox makes it to 93/100. Official release notes for Firefox 3.5 can be read here.
Firefox 3.5 is a much-needed improvement to the world's most popular alternative browser. At the time of writing, Mozilla was about to log the 2 millionth download after only 7 1/2 hours. While some of the improvements, such as the HTML5 and other developer enhancements will continue to make the browser their first choice, many of the other changes merely keep it in-line with the competition. For now, Firefox will continue to rely on its vast base of developers and users who value their customizations over superlative claims, so long as Mozilla keeps its browser close enough to its competitors. Now that Firefox has kicked open the door against Internet Explorer, it'd be foolish to expect that they'd be the only ones to rush through it.
A correction was made to this story. See below for details.
Testing Opera 10 alpha confirms it can boast that it's the second browser in development that is fully compliant with the Acid3 benchmarks. It's also markedly faster than Opera 9.62 at processing JavaScript, but it's half as fast as the fastest Web browser currently available.
Opera 10 alpha is Acid3-standards compliant.
(Credit: CNET Networks)On both Windows and Mac OS, it was no surprise to see the Acid3 standards test come up 100 out of 100 since that was the big news from Opera Software earlier today. The browser is also three times faster than the current stable release, with the SunSpider Java test clocking in at 5,740.8 milliseconds. That compares very favorably to Opera 9.62, which I benchmarked at 15,468.8 ms, but is still slower than the Firefox 3.1 beta. Mozilla's latest developer build zips in at 2,787.6 ms when running its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
The majority of the changes in this Opera alpha release are aimed at developers. The average user will rarely, if ever, come into contact with them. That doesn't mean they're not important, though, with further support for CSS3. These changes include sourcing fonts, transparency rendering, animation framerates, and two key evolutions in Opera Dragonfly. You can use the DOM inspector to determine the source of traffic, useful for Ajax debugging, and the ability to edit attributes in real-time.
There are three minor but important user-level changes. It's hard to believe that HTML support in Opera Mail was missing before now, but you'll now be able to see all those holiday e-cards within Opera. There's also a spell-checker rolled in for text fields, not just e-mail.
Opera 10 features an auto-install option for updates.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The last new feature, automatic program updates, could be potentially risky. Certainly in Firefox it would likely lead to the disabling of many extensions, although there's not much of a chance of that happening in Opera with its smaller developer community. The bigger concern is one of control: do you choose which version of a program you get to use, or does the publisher of the program? As annoying as Apple's update monitor and nag screen are, they don't force users to update; you can opt out.
It took a little hunting to find, but the default setting in Opera 10 seems to be the more standard notification behavior. If you'd like to tweak your update settings, go to Tools, Preferences, choose the Advanced tab on the right and then Security from the list of options. The Opera update drop-down menu allows you to change the default to "Don't check for updates" or "Automatic updates".
The big news of the standards compliance will only take Opera so far if other browsers match that mark. It'll be interesting to see, as Google Chrome introduces extensibility, whether Opera will go that route or if it'll try to maintain its niche market as a solid and fast out-of-the-box browser. However, Opera 10 was surprisingly stable during a half-day of testing for an alpha release, crashing not even once.
Correction: This story initially gave the wrong name of the Java test I ran. It is called SunSpider.
Thirteen-year-old Opera has been the perennial underdog in the browser wars, but Opera 10 alpha brings some unexpected firepower to the field. Unlike Google Chrome, Firefox 3, or any other browser on the market except for Safari 4 Developer Preview, Opera 10 will comply fully with the Acid3 test, according to the Norwegian publisher.
Opera 10 alpha introduces a text field spell-checker.
(Credit: Opera Software, Inc.)Expected to be available now for public testing, Opera 10 is powered by an update to its proprietary rendering engine. Presto 2.2 is supposed to be 30 percent faster than Presto 2.1, the engine driving Opera 9.5. Presto 2.2, says the company, will be the basis for future versions of its mobile browsers as well as the desktop editions.
In addition to the engine improvements, the big news is that Opera 10 apparently scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 testing Web site. The Web Standards Project created the Acid tests to check a range of linking and rendering abilities in browsers to encourage a standard baseline for coding. Theoretically, sticking to the test rules should ensure that Web sites can be seen properly on any browser, while reducing development costs.
For comparison, Firefox 3.0.4 scores 71/100, while Firefox 3.1 beta 1 hits 89/100. Google Chrome 0.4 earns 79/100, while Internet Explorer 7 struggles at 14. These scores might be slightly different from the ones in the article linked to because of recent modifications in each browser.
Similar to the development build of Safari 4, Opera 10 alpha doesn't have many new features--yet. The alpha is expected to introduce on-the-fly spell checking for text fields, support for HTML formatting in Opera Mail, and an auto-update feature to force browser updates. It's not clear at the time of writing whether this update is something users can opt out of.
Google's Chrome gets a 78 out of 100 on the Acid3 test
Even though Google has the stable builds edged out, we have to remember that Chrome is still in development, where it is topped by a number of other "unstable," development builds, including Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 (85), Opera (91), and Safari 4 (100). It is interesting that the Safari 4 Developer Preview performs so much better than Chrome, given that they are both built on Apple's WebKit framework.
Whenever a new browser or an update to a browser is released, one of the first things that techies tend to look at is how it fares on the Acid test. The latest iteration of the test, Acid3, is the hardest yet and no "stable" browser builds have achieved a 100 out of 100 on the test, although the Safari 4 Developer Preview has.
Passing the Acid3 test is an important goal for browser developers and it's great to see that Chrome is performing so well on its first attempt.
Update:
A reader, Benjamin, writes in saying that under Vista SP1, Chrome shows scores ranging from 74 to 79 on the Acid3 test. Running it again right now, the test showed a score of a 79. Some of the initial variability could have been due to the servers for the Acid3 test being hammered as a result of Chrome's release.
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