The open-source browser is now available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Originally envisioned as [...]]]> Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is the culmination of nearly a year-long quest to build a browser for the next version of the web. And while it’s not perfect, it comes very, very close.

The open-source browser is now available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Originally envisioned as a quick follow-up to 2008’s release of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla ended up packing in quite a few extra features into its flagship browser and spent months making sure that Firefox 3.5 was the fastest, most powerful Firefox yet.

Firefox 3.5 brings with it entirely new and much faster rendering engines for both static web pages and the JavaScript code that powers today’s complex web-based applications. There are new privacy features, new capabilities for playing video and audio files and improved search tools. There are also a handful of other new features that should prove useful for both Firefox devotees and newcomers alike.

We’ve been using the latest betas and release candidates for the last few months. No matter what kind of web surfer you are, we recommend you download Firefox 3.5 as soon as you can. Here’s why.

A New Browser for a New Web

Much has changed in the year since Firefox 3 first hit the scene. Most significantly, Google Chrome arrived in September 2008, bringing with it support for many of the web’s latest technologies. Things like offline data access, geo-awareness and native video and audio playback were previously only glamor features — now that Google is highlighting the importance of those features, they’re must-haves. Chrome also came out of the gate showing off some extreme speed, and it spurred some friendly competition among browser makers to boost their speed of their apps. The latest versions of Safari and Opera showed large speed gains as a result.

Another reason browsers are getting faster is because websites are growing more complex. It’s not only social networks and media sharing sites that are responsible, but also productivity applications like e-mail, calendars and other office apps. These web destinations are behaving like full-blown applications, and they’re require more powerful, more nimble browsers.

Microsoft, which still commands the lion’s share of the browser market (see chart below), released a new version of Internet Explorer earlier this year. IE8 upped the ante when it comes to privacy, safety and usability features that are easy enough for consumers to grasp. It also got a speed boost.

So, Firefox, not even a year old, has a lot of catching up to do. Version 3.5 fills in the gaps admirably.

Speed

Firefox 3.5 has plenty of new features that make it worth the upgrade, but the real reason we love it so much is the massive speed gain. Mozilla claims that Firefox 3.5 is twice as fast as its predecessor. While we haven’t been able to back up these claims reliably in our tests, and Chrome and Safari are still marginally faster than Firefox, you’ll definitely notice a big speed boost on JavaScript-heavy sites like Gmail.

The faster performance is the result of the brand new TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine. According to Mozilla VP of Engineering Mike Shaver, the new tools in TraceMonkey allow JavaScript code to render on par with native code. That means the improved speed won’t just be in web apps. TraceMonkey will also improve add-on performance as well, since extensions and other Firefox tools are written in JavaScript.

Firefox 3.5 isn’t all about JavaScript, though. There have been plenty of changes in the latest version Gecko, the rendering engine that drives Firefox. These enhancements speed up page load times and enable Firefox 3.5 to take advantage of the latest code being used to build the next generation of web applications.

HTML 5

Though it won’t be finalized for at least another year, the specification for HTML 5 — the next revision of the markup language used to build websites — is already being implemented by the latest browsers. This new version of Firefox brings Mozilla’s browser up to speed with most recent releases by supporting many of the capabilities afforded by HTML 5.

The HTML 5 support in Firefox 3.5 allows for video and audio embeds without the need for the Flash plug-in. Right now, most video and audio playback on the web requires Adobe’s Flash Player. Even though it’s a free download, Mozilla thinks it’s too limiting to require a plug-in to watch videos and listen to songs, so it built those capabilities right into the browser. Now, website publishers can place a video into a web page just as they would a photograph or any other graphic, and it will play smoothly in Firefox 3.5 — no plug-in required.

Microsoft has been excitedly promoting it’s Windows Phone 7 Series since [...]]]> Mozilla has decided to stop all development of Firefox on Microsoft Windows Mobile. Although the browser was nearing completion on Windows CE 6, the organization has determined that Windows Phone 7 is not a viable platform for future versions of Firefox.

Microsoft has been excitedly promoting it’s Windows Phone 7 Series since it was announced in February. The company believes it has created the hardware and software to compete with Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, Palm’s Pre and other modern smartphones.

Phones will not be released until later this year, but it appears Microsoft will be following a similar marketing model to Apple’s App Store. Applications can only be developed using the Silverlight or XNA Game Studio runtime environments. Unfortunately for Mozilla, third-party developers will not have direct access to the phone’s hardware.

Stuart Parmenter, Mozilla’s director of Mobile Engineering posted the following comment on his blog:

While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold.

There’s a slim possibility Mozilla could become an application partner and gain full access to the platform, but this seems unlikely given that Microsoft will want to push the Internet Explorer browser and brand.

So where does this leave Mozilla’s Fennec project? It’s undoubtedly a great browser but it’s only available on Nokia’s top-end N900 and N810 smartphones. An Android version is in the early stages of development, but the organization will have no presence on iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, or Microsoft devices. It’s an ambitious project so it’s a shame so few people can actually use the application.

If Mozilla want to be in the mobile browser market, I’d suggest they follow Opera’s lead and create a simpler browser which can be installed on a wide range of popular devices. More advanced applications can be developed when the market is ready for them.

Is Mozilla right to abandon Windows Mobile development? Is this the beginning of the end for the Fennec project?

Mac version has accelerated even more and now run by [...]]]> The new version 3.6 of Firefox for Windows which Mozilla released on 21 January is 14.5 percent faster than its predecessor which debuted in June 2009 but still lags behind the speed demons Safari and Chrome, shows recent tests by Computerworld, USA.

Mac version has accelerated even more and now run by about 30 percent faster than Firefox 3.5.

Firefox 3.6 is the third fastest of five browser for Windows. Firefox 3.6 JavaScript runs in three times less time than Opera 10 and over four times faster than Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). But even when the reinforcement JavaScript, Firefox 3.6 is generally two times slower than Safari and almost two times slower than Chrome 4.0. Safari also won first place, the Google browser diverging about 6.5 percent, slightly shorter than that recorded in the lead for the test of time on Mac in November 2009.

Most aggressive developers of browsers boast improved using JavaScript in the past two years. From Microsoft said that work on the acceleration of IE9. In November last year, Steven Sinofsky – president of Windows and Windows Live, said that work on the next version of Internet Explorer is set browser’s JavaScript speed to a level of competition. Although it is not yet known data from any testing IE9, neither version is available for independent testing.

In another evaluation system – Acid3, which checks how close one browser standards associated with DOM (Document Object Model), CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets) and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) – Firefox 3.6 obtained rating 92 points out of possible 100. Current versions of Safari, Chrome and Opera compiled 100 points, while IE8 is finished with 24.

But lately I have some issues with these newer versions [...]]]> I’m a big fan of Firefox, after all you can see that by reading this blog. I write a lot about it because as I use it regularly, I keep learning new cool things and of course share them with you here.

But lately I have some issues with these newer versions of Firefox, or to be more exact, with Firefox 3 and 3.5 versions. Whenever I start Firefox it seems whole system is slowing down and everything is working pretty slow and sometimes even stops to work. Especially when I type an URL into address bar and then hit ‘enter’.

I really couldn’t stand that (very frustrating isn’t it?) and so after searching for a solution to the problem I found it and fixed it easily. Everything works like a charm now! If you have similar problem with Firefox (slowing down and stopping to work), then here’s what you need to do.

Firefox History Data and Windows History. These two things are big factor that slows down your Firefox.

When you type some URL in Firefox address bar, it tries to get previously visited sites from browser history to suggest you related URLs. If you are a power Internet user and browse a huge number of sites on daily basis, your Firefox actually stores a huge data in browser history. So much data will definitely slow down Firefox as described above.

To fix this problem, you need to delete the cache of your Firefox Browser. But wait, that’s not all! That does not delete the full history because Firefox stores history in a profile folder shared for bookmarks as well. When you clear the cache using Firefox, it only deletes files located in cache folder.

To really delete history of browser, you will have to remove or rename a file named places.sqlite, (it’s better to rename it, so if later you decide to undo the changes, you just rename it again as it was before), below is how to find it but before doing that, make sure you have closed all instances of Firefox browser on your computer which means no running process of Firefox.

You can find file named ‘places.sqlite’ (without quotations) here:
C:Users{your windows username}AppDataRoamingMozillaFirefoxProfilesy5ms34me.default

Note that “AppData” folder is hidden and you need to enable “Show hidden Files and Folders” in Folder Options to be able to see it.

Rename the file places.sqlite to some other name like places.sqlite.bak to recognize it as backup.

Just a few more steps and you’re done:

1. Now start Firefox, and go to ‘Tools’ menu.

2. Click on ‘Options’ under ‘Tools’ and then click on “Privacy” tab. There you can see options related to Firefox history.

3. Select option ‘Use Custom Setting For History’. Now there is a filed that let’s you change the number of days that Firefox saves history for.

4. Change it from 90 to something like 10. Click OK and close the window.

5. Now restart Firefox and…

You can now enjoy much faster response time and get rid of big and frustrating slowdowns!

I have to say it one more time, it’s my favorite word

Enjoy!

It might seem a strange situation, given the fact that Microsoft’s [...]]]> It seems that Firefox’s persistent nagging of users to update to the latest version has resulted in it passing out the various flavours of Internet Explorer. There are now more users on Firefox 3.5 than any other web browser.

It might seem a strange situation, given the fact that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer commands such a massive share of the market, but it seems that the Internet Explorer user base is fractured, being split as it is across IE6, EI7 and IE8 for various reasons. Still, we imagine the folks over at Firefox will be pleased to hear that it’s managed to pip Internet Explorer for the browser Christmas number one.

Of course, it’s just a kind of perfect storm that’s resulted in Firefox 3.5 managing to be the most used browser. Since the release of Internet Explorer 8, IE7 has been seeing its user base gradually eroded as people slowly migrate towards the most recent version of Microsoft’s web browser. That means that as IE8 has risen, IE7 has dropped fairly sharply. The result is that the various iterations of Internet Explorer have Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5, which has been cannibalising its still-fairly-healthy Firefox 3.0 users as it rises.

It seems likely that we’ll see Internet Explorer back to the top spot be the end of next month, but for now we imagine we’ll be fully saturated with advertising from the Firefox folks telling us about how their browser is the most popular one on earth for the next couple of weeks. Still, looks like it’ll be an open-source Christmas.

You can check out the statistics in http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-weekly-200827-200951 if you’d like to see the graph, and it’s certainly interesting.