15 ms·

Firefox 4 Beta 8 has been released

74 points by ahalam 16y ago

Has the JägerMonkey, hardware accelerated rendering, HSTS protocol support, better web font support, etc.

rdoherty 16y ago
Even more impressive is their HTML5, WebGL, audio and video demo linked to in the post: http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-navigator/ http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-na...
- wynand 16y ago
  I remember some months (maybe more than a year ago) when there was a story about a Doom-style engine in Javascript and someone commented how sad it was that with all this powerful technology, we're getting excited about 1990s style graphics in web browsers. I had sympathy for that but it now seems to me like web technologies are improving at such a rate that we'll hit near-native performance in a few years (of course, technologies like Google's NaCl can do that now but it would be quite something to see technologies like WebGL and Javascript close the performance gap).
- natmaster 16y ago
  View this demo in Firefox 4, then view IE9's demo in IE9: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Galactic/Default.html http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Galactic/Defau... These demos really demonstrates the difference between Firefox 4 and IE9.
  - IChrisI 16y ago
    For those of us that can't / don't want to install IE9, can you describe the differences?
  - code_duck 16y ago
    Great test. I don't have IE9 (since I need IE8 for testing, and MS still hasn't figured out how/conjured the will to make IE work like a normal application), but it's interesting to compare FF4 and Chrome. The performance looked about equivalent between the 2. Neither reports a framerate, so not sure about the exact numbers.
    - Athtar 16y ago
      Just a FYI - You can uninstall IE9 from your computer. It's not listed in the Add/Remove Programs list but you can find it under the "Installed Updates" list.
      - code_duck 16y ago
        And everything truly reverts to the same as it was before, Vista with IE7 upgraded to IE8? I'm (understandably in my opinion) a bit wary. I need to test websites on a normal installation of IE8. IE often has odd little details that make one machine act different from another once you start changing things.
- Encosia 16y ago
  My machine (with 102 other processes currently running) didn't break 17.5% CPU usage during the entire demo and my GPU fan never spun up. Not bad.
  - thristian 16y ago
    What OS and graphics card are you using? I pegged my CPU and got about three frames per second in both Chrome and Firefox, but that's on Linux with Intel graphics; about the bottom of the heap as far as 3D acceleration goes.
    - Encosia 16y ago
      Win7 and a GTX 275.
there 16y ago
the thing that keeps me using firefox, yet prevents me from using the new beta releases, is extensions. i have a lot of extensions that i use on a daily basis and yet only about half of them work with firefox 4 so far. some probably don't even require any code changes other than bumping up the version marker that lets firefox install it on a new version, but a lot of extension developers seem to wait until releases are stable before testing and updating.
- wvenable 16y ago
  Usually after release most of these extensions get updated pretty quickly. I'm currently using Firefox (same reasons) and I'm waiting for the final release. I'll probably update right away and live with a few broken extensions (or hack up their version numbers) until they all get updated.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  http://dotnetwizard.net/soft-apps/firefox-3-beta-4-disabling-extension-compatibility-check/ http://dotnetwizard.net/soft-apps/firefox-3-beta-4-disabling...
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    The correct way to do this is to install Mozilla's Add-on Compatibility Reporter. It lets you selectively disable and report those add-ons that aren't working correctly on new versions.
    - rdoherty 16y ago
      Link to Add-on Compatibility Reporter: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/15003 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/15003
    - there 16y ago
      thanks, i've submitted reports for all of my add-ons under the new beta.
rorrr 16y ago
Beta 8 was released a week ago. Beta 9 is available now: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates... I tested beta 8 a few days ago, it was still twice as slow as Chrome 8 (Sunspider benchmark).
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Check out http://www.arewefastyet.com http://www.arewefastyet.com for daily benchmarks against Chrome and Safari/WebKit; it definitely shows something different, and my experience is also different; Firefox 4 is about even with the others now. Perhaps you have a misconfiguration somewhere?
- sayrer 16y ago
  (I work on Firefox) Beta 9 is not available. You are linking to nightly builds that will eventually become Beta 9. That SunSpider score vs Chrome is nigh impossible in the default configuration. Maybe you have Firebug turned on? I'd expect the Firefox SunSpider score vs. Chrome to be very close, with the winner varying depending on the machine, OS, and release channel.
- natmaster 16y ago
  My results indicate Firefox 4 is slight faster than Chrome on that benchmark (10%). On kraken it is almost twice as fast.
mberning 16y ago
Terrible usability issues on Win7. Almost all of the menus have a problem with flickering and/or disappearing elements.
- trafficlight 16y ago
  Not in my experience. I've used every beta so far on 64 bit Win7 without any basic usability issues like that.
- icegreentea 16y ago
  I ran into similar problems when I first got beta 7 on Vista. I ranted about it on and on to my friends (among other things it trashed all my bookmarks). And then the whole thing crashed. And when I restarted FF, it prompted me to reinstall beta 7 again, and everything was fine (happily using it now). So I think your problem is with a buggy install/upgrade, rather than the beta itself. Not sure how you can trigger a reinstall (dunno, do dumb things till it crashes), but yeah.
- sid0 16y ago
  Are your graphics drivers up-to-date? edit: to add, I'm on 64-bit Win7 too -- I've been using nightlies for over a year and haven't seen anything of this sort.
  - p0nce 16y ago
    It's not always safer to be up-to-date with graphics drivers.
ezy 16y ago
Flash video crashes constantly and it still doesn't work with netflix. Who cares about crappy 90's style GL demos? SOmehow, it seems priorities aren't quite right at mozilla, IMO.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of software development. There is a stable version of Firefox (version 3.6), you can download it at http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/. Mozilla is also adding new features to Firefox in an effort to enable web developers to do new things in new ways. Development and stabilization of these new features is ongoing, which is why it's restricted to a beta program in the next version. What would you prefer? That Mozilla abandon innovation completely and concentrate utterly on stability? That you not be allowed to participate in beta testing the next version of the browser? If you don't want to test Firefox's new features in the unstable version then perhaps you can avoid running the beta and just stick with the older version.
  - ezy 16y ago
    This made me laugh, WTF does "purpose of software development" actually mean? That phrase is itself a misunderstanding waiting to happen. :-) Yeah... Ok, I probably deserved a bit of a snarky reply -- I missed the 32-bit requirement for silverlight in the release notes (apparently their sandboxing for 64bit is broken). Just for that oversight, I'll take my lumps. I do think, however, that you're thinking in a binary way about this. It's possible to add new features and fix bugs at the same time, ya know. It's possible to prioritize stuff even in a beta... you don't just pile on the shiny new because you slapped a "beta" sticker on it. It's a beta release, not an alpha, and the eighth beta release. Right on the durn frontpage is says it should be stable enough for normal use in most cases. I would classify youtube as one of those cases. As soon as the 7th release came out, it was broken in an obvious way vis a vis youtube video on some platforms. They had months to fix it. Mozilla obviously decided that WebGL bling was more important... ...and that's fine, they can do what they want and yes, it's a beta release and webgl is cool, but I still think their priorities are screwed up.
freyrs3 16y ago
The beta does not play well with XMonad, seems to have quite a few focus issues.
- code_duck 16y ago
  Unfortunately I've had that problem with a lot of cross-platform software on Linux lately. Chrome, for instance, doesn't seem to be made with the idea in mind that people might use window managers other than Gnome, or might have settings other than the default chosen for certain behaviors. For instance, double clicking the title bar maximizes the Chrome window - though I have that set to a shade action. There are a few other issues, too, so it's not surprising to me that there are problems with a WM they've probably never tested such as xmonad.
  - thristian 16y ago
    That sounds like fun with Chrome's window-manager emulation. It behaves a lot more respectably when you go Settings → Personal Stuff → Appearance and choose "Use system title bar and borders".
    - code_duck 16y ago
      I've tried that too earlier, but it seemed to trigger a couple of other bugs - getting the mouse 'stuck' on the title area, for one. This was many months ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally fixed by now.
fletchowns 16y ago
Installed Firefox 4 Beta 8 on my Windows 7 32 bit machine. Went to the demo page, waited for it to load, hit the start button, and my machine immediately crashed (black screen, no hdd activity, not responsive). Rebooted, tried to load random page from my bookmarks, crashed again. Fortunately that time it didn't take my whole computer with it. Guess I'll try again in a few weeks?
- kinetik 16y ago
  Try updating your video drivers, that sounds like a crash caused by exercising hardware acceleration.
- sjs 16y ago
  Sounds pretty serious. Have you reported the bug to Mozilla?
latif 16y ago
Firefox 4 is a memory hog compared to Firefox 3.6. Worse, it leaks memory like a sieve. After a bit of browsing, it is using 350 MB with just a single tab open. Firefox 3.6 uses half that much memory on the same machine.
- latif 16y ago
  I beat the 350 MB by going to the Atlas Obscura website. Firefox managed to use up 550 MB with only a single tab open. This too after a clean start. Firefox just keeps on leaking memory when the Atlas Obscura website is open. I hate saying this but Firefox 4 is shaping to be a disaster of epic proportions. The Javascript benchmarks are all nice and good but dear Mozilla folk you people also need to write a garbage collector for your implementation of Javascript that actually collects garbage.
- thristian 16y ago
  The other day, I discovered a Firefox nightly using a gig and a half of memory after some light browsing; after some investigation it turned out that had a few hundred meg allocated immediately after startup (having loaded only about:mozilla) and it allocated a few hundred more when I opened and immediately closed the bookmarks and history menus. Turns out, in Safe Mode it was perfectly well behaved, and after hitting the 'reset all preferences to defaults' button, Firefox not only takes less memory, but is snappier too.
- dochtman 16y ago
  It's probably this regression: http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2010/12/21/rude-surprise-startup-overhead-of-windows-font-apis/ http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2010/12/21/rude-surprise-start...
danielrm26 16y ago
I don't mean to be "that guy", but how is anyone seriously enthused about Firefox anymore when Chrome is on the scene? I love and respect Firefox for showing the world there was a better way. But they are the Freud to a much more mature approach at this point. I can't use Firefox without wanting to injure myself within five minutes. It is dead to me.
- sid0 16y ago
  Chrome is a closed-source browser with a rigid failure of a UI and a sync feature that hands over all my bookmarks and history to Google. I can't even move the buttons around -- what a joke. How any privacy-conscious person can use Chrome is beyond me.
  - dennylin93 16y ago
    Actually Chrome is built on top of Chromium, a BSD licensed browser. Try out Chromium if you're concerned about privacy.
    - sid0 16y ago
      It's still a rigid failure of a UI.
  - mootothemax 16y ago
    I can't even move the buttons around I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Firefox won't let you separate the back and forwards buttons, is that also a "rigid failure" in UI design?
    - sid0 16y ago
      I want to move the refresh button to the right of the address bar, since that's what I'm used to. I can't. Back/forward together makes sense. Refresh next to back/forward isn't any better or worse than refresh to the right of the address bar, so it comes down to personal taste -- Chrome imposes its own taste upon me, while Firefox is happy to let me decide.

74 points by ahalam 16y ago

Has the JägerMonkey, hardware accelerated rendering, HSTS protocol support, better web font support, etc.

Even more impressive is their HTML5, WebGL, audio and video demo linked to in the post: http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-navigator/ http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-na...

wynand 16y ago
I remember some months (maybe more than a year ago) when there was a story about a Doom-style engine in Javascript and someone commented how sad it was that with all this powerful technology, we're getting excited about 1990s style graphics in web browsers. I had sympathy for that but it now seems to me like web technologies are improving at such a rate that we'll hit near-native performance in a few years (of course, technologies like Google's NaCl can do that now but it would be quite something to see technologies like WebGL and Javascript close the performance gap).
natmaster 16y ago
View this demo in Firefox 4, then view IE9's demo in IE9: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Galactic/Default.html http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Galactic/Defau... These demos really demonstrates the difference between Firefox 4 and IE9.
- IChrisI 16y ago
  For those of us that can't / don't want to install IE9, can you describe the differences?
- code_duck 16y ago
  Great test. I don't have IE9 (since I need IE8 for testing, and MS still hasn't figured out how/conjured the will to make IE work like a normal application), but it's interesting to compare FF4 and Chrome. The performance looked about equivalent between the 2. Neither reports a framerate, so not sure about the exact numbers.
  - Athtar 16y ago
    Just a FYI - You can uninstall IE9 from your computer. It's not listed in the Add/Remove Programs list but you can find it under the "Installed Updates" list.
    - code_duck 16y ago
      And everything truly reverts to the same as it was before, Vista with IE7 upgraded to IE8? I'm (understandably in my opinion) a bit wary. I need to test websites on a normal installation of IE8. IE often has odd little details that make one machine act different from another once you start changing things.
Encosia 16y ago
My machine (with 102 other processes currently running) didn't break 17.5% CPU usage during the entire demo and my GPU fan never spun up. Not bad.
- thristian 16y ago
  What OS and graphics card are you using? I pegged my CPU and got about three frames per second in both Chrome and Firefox, but that's on Linux with Intel graphics; about the bottom of the heap as far as 3D acceleration goes.
  - Encosia 16y ago
    Win7 and a GTX 275.

there 16y ago

the thing that keeps me using firefox, yet prevents me from using the new beta releases, is extensions. i have a lot of extensions that i use on a daily basis and yet only about half of them work with firefox 4 so far. some probably don't even require any code changes other than bumping up the version marker that lets firefox install it on a new version, but a lot of extension developers seem to wait until releases are stable before testing and updating.

wvenable 16y ago
Usually after release most of these extensions get updated pretty quickly. I'm currently using Firefox (same reasons) and I'm waiting for the final release. I'll probably update right away and live with a few broken extensions (or hack up their version numbers) until they all get updated.
patrickaljord 16y ago
http://dotnetwizard.net/soft-apps/firefox-3-beta-4-disabling-extension-compatibility-check/ http://dotnetwizard.net/soft-apps/firefox-3-beta-4-disabling...
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  The correct way to do this is to install Mozilla's Add-on Compatibility Reporter. It lets you selectively disable and report those add-ons that aren't working correctly on new versions.
  - rdoherty 16y ago
    Link to Add-on Compatibility Reporter: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/15003 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/15003
  - there 16y ago
    thanks, i've submitted reports for all of my add-ons under the new beta.

rorrr 16y ago

Beta 8 was released a week ago. Beta 9 is available now: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates... I tested beta 8 a few days ago, it was still twice as slow as Chrome 8 (Sunspider benchmark).

cookiecaper 16y ago
Check out http://www.arewefastyet.com http://www.arewefastyet.com for daily benchmarks against Chrome and Safari/WebKit; it definitely shows something different, and my experience is also different; Firefox 4 is about even with the others now. Perhaps you have a misconfiguration somewhere?
sayrer 16y ago
(I work on Firefox) Beta 9 is not available. You are linking to nightly builds that will eventually become Beta 9. That SunSpider score vs Chrome is nigh impossible in the default configuration. Maybe you have Firebug turned on? I'd expect the Firefox SunSpider score vs. Chrome to be very close, with the winner varying depending on the machine, OS, and release channel.
natmaster 16y ago
My results indicate Firefox 4 is slight faster than Chrome on that benchmark (10%). On kraken it is almost twice as fast.

mberning 16y ago

Terrible usability issues on Win7. Almost all of the menus have a problem with flickering and/or disappearing elements.

trafficlight 16y ago
Not in my experience. I've used every beta so far on 64 bit Win7 without any basic usability issues like that.
icegreentea 16y ago
I ran into similar problems when I first got beta 7 on Vista. I ranted about it on and on to my friends (among other things it trashed all my bookmarks). And then the whole thing crashed. And when I restarted FF, it prompted me to reinstall beta 7 again, and everything was fine (happily using it now). So I think your problem is with a buggy install/upgrade, rather than the beta itself. Not sure how you can trigger a reinstall (dunno, do dumb things till it crashes), but yeah.
sid0 16y ago
Are your graphics drivers up-to-date? edit: to add, I'm on 64-bit Win7 too -- I've been using nightlies for over a year and haven't seen anything of this sort.
- p0nce 16y ago
  It's not always safer to be up-to-date with graphics drivers.

ezy 16y ago

Flash video crashes constantly and it still doesn't work with netflix. Who cares about crappy 90's style GL demos? SOmehow, it seems priorities aren't quite right at mozilla, IMO.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of software development. There is a stable version of Firefox (version 3.6), you can download it at http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/. Mozilla is also adding new features to Firefox in an effort to enable web developers to do new things in new ways. Development and stabilization of these new features is ongoing, which is why it's restricted to a beta program in the next version. What would you prefer? That Mozilla abandon innovation completely and concentrate utterly on stability? That you not be allowed to participate in beta testing the next version of the browser? If you don't want to test Firefox's new features in the unstable version then perhaps you can avoid running the beta and just stick with the older version.
- ezy 16y ago
  This made me laugh, WTF does "purpose of software development" actually mean? That phrase is itself a misunderstanding waiting to happen. :-) Yeah... Ok, I probably deserved a bit of a snarky reply -- I missed the 32-bit requirement for silverlight in the release notes (apparently their sandboxing for 64bit is broken). Just for that oversight, I'll take my lumps. I do think, however, that you're thinking in a binary way about this. It's possible to add new features and fix bugs at the same time, ya know. It's possible to prioritize stuff even in a beta... you don't just pile on the shiny new because you slapped a "beta" sticker on it. It's a beta release, not an alpha, and the eighth beta release. Right on the durn frontpage is says it should be stable enough for normal use in most cases. I would classify youtube as one of those cases. As soon as the 7th release came out, it was broken in an obvious way vis a vis youtube video on some platforms. They had months to fix it. Mozilla obviously decided that WebGL bling was more important... ...and that's fine, they can do what they want and yes, it's a beta release and webgl is cool, but I still think their priorities are screwed up.

freyrs3 16y ago

The beta does not play well with XMonad, seems to have quite a few focus issues.

code_duck 16y ago
Unfortunately I've had that problem with a lot of cross-platform software on Linux lately. Chrome, for instance, doesn't seem to be made with the idea in mind that people might use window managers other than Gnome, or might have settings other than the default chosen for certain behaviors. For instance, double clicking the title bar maximizes the Chrome window - though I have that set to a shade action. There are a few other issues, too, so it's not surprising to me that there are problems with a WM they've probably never tested such as xmonad.
- thristian 16y ago
  That sounds like fun with Chrome's window-manager emulation. It behaves a lot more respectably when you go Settings → Personal Stuff → Appearance and choose "Use system title bar and borders".
  - code_duck 16y ago
    I've tried that too earlier, but it seemed to trigger a couple of other bugs - getting the mouse 'stuck' on the title area, for one. This was many months ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally fixed by now.

fletchowns 16y ago

Installed Firefox 4 Beta 8 on my Windows 7 32 bit machine. Went to the demo page, waited for it to load, hit the start button, and my machine immediately crashed (black screen, no hdd activity, not responsive). Rebooted, tried to load random page from my bookmarks, crashed again. Fortunately that time it didn't take my whole computer with it. Guess I'll try again in a few weeks?

kinetik 16y ago
Try updating your video drivers, that sounds like a crash caused by exercising hardware acceleration.
sjs 16y ago
Sounds pretty serious. Have you reported the bug to Mozilla?

latif 16y ago

Firefox 4 is a memory hog compared to Firefox 3.6. Worse, it leaks memory like a sieve. After a bit of browsing, it is using 350 MB with just a single tab open. Firefox 3.6 uses half that much memory on the same machine.

latif 16y ago
I beat the 350 MB by going to the Atlas Obscura website. Firefox managed to use up 550 MB with only a single tab open. This too after a clean start. Firefox just keeps on leaking memory when the Atlas Obscura website is open. I hate saying this but Firefox 4 is shaping to be a disaster of epic proportions. The Javascript benchmarks are all nice and good but dear Mozilla folk you people also need to write a garbage collector for your implementation of Javascript that actually collects garbage.
thristian 16y ago
The other day, I discovered a Firefox nightly using a gig and a half of memory after some light browsing; after some investigation it turned out that had a few hundred meg allocated immediately after startup (having loaded only about:mozilla) and it allocated a few hundred more when I opened and immediately closed the bookmarks and history menus. Turns out, in Safe Mode it was perfectly well behaved, and after hitting the 'reset all preferences to defaults' button, Firefox not only takes less memory, but is snappier too.
dochtman 16y ago
It's probably this regression: http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2010/12/21/rude-surprise-startup-overhead-of-windows-font-apis/ http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2010/12/21/rude-surprise-start...

danielrm26 16y ago

I don't mean to be "that guy", but how is anyone seriously enthused about Firefox anymore when Chrome is on the scene? I love and respect Firefox for showing the world there was a better way. But they are the Freud to a much more mature approach at this point. I can't use Firefox without wanting to injure myself within five minutes. It is dead to me.

sid0 16y ago
Chrome is a closed-source browser with a rigid failure of a UI and a sync feature that hands over all my bookmarks and history to Google. I can't even move the buttons around -- what a joke. How any privacy-conscious person can use Chrome is beyond me.
- dennylin93 16y ago
  Actually Chrome is built on top of Chromium, a BSD licensed browser. Try out Chromium if you're concerned about privacy.
  - sid0 16y ago
    It's still a rigid failure of a UI.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  I can't even move the buttons around I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Firefox won't let you separate the back and forwards buttons, is that also a "rigid failure" in UI design?
  - sid0 16y ago
    I want to move the refresh button to the right of the address bar, since that's what I'm used to. I can't. Back/forward together makes sense. Refresh next to back/forward isn't any better or worse than refresh to the right of the address bar, so it comes down to personal taste -- Chrome imposes its own taste upon me, while Firefox is happy to let me decide.