Firefox 13 Comes Online Early, Now Available for Download

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livebriand

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Now if it were as fast as chrome and had tabs as separate processes, I'd consider switching back to it. However, nowadays, it simply can't compete well with Chrome.
 
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nope. too lazy to download it now. I wait for ff14 next week.
 

nuvon

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Most visited web site?....oh no! that means I have to hide the screen every time I start FF when someone is with me... :)
 

hawkwindeb

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[citation][nom]cantcatchupwithfirefox[/nom]nope. too lazy to download it now. I wait for ff14 next week.[/citation]
Ha, but I thought it was a new version every other day (sarcasm)
 
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Yes, but it seems the only major browser that values privacy. That's worth a lot. I switched back from Chrome to Firefox!
 
[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]I was expecting more updates, but at least Mozilla is on schedule unlike their FF4.[/citation]
[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Bah, I meant more features wit the FF13 compared to FF12. Where's that edit button?[/citation]

At the top of the comments, click the blue text link that says "Read comments on the forums", scroll down to your comment, and there is an edit button. This is not true for tomsguide.com articles, but it is true for tomshardware.com articles.

Also, here's a link to it right here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/15881-55-firefox-online-early-download
 


... Do you want a faster browser or not? Not having every page load until you are using it speeds things up. Chrome does something similar.
 


Chrome max tabs on low end machines with 2GB or less: A few dozen, maybe a little more. FF max tabs on such machines: Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Not everyone uses so many, but FF is one of the few browsers (only major browser globally) that can do it without huge memory imprints. Individual processes for tabs is a huge part of why Chrome uses so much memory in comparison. There are trade-offs to consider to each approach. Regardless, FF could add multi-threading support without having each tab in its own process. Also, Chrome doesn't always have a process for every tab. Grouped tabs often share a process.

FF is also usually more stable than Chrome right now (I've had several crashes that forced me to restart Chrome, but I've yet to have such happen to my FF in a long time) and stability can be more important than speed. Besides, it's not like FF is slow anyway, especially with No-script, adblock, fasterfox, etc. They take only a few seconds to install and you're good to go after a few minutes spent setting them up if their defaults aren't as good as you want them to be.
 
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The Thumbs up/Thumbs Down should be used to vote up or down good, informative and useful comments. Not a tool to vote down opinions of others whom you do not agree with.
 

mayankleoboy1

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there is an optimized version of Firefox that cuts all the crap new 'features' and removes the auto-update as well. It has better memory usage and is faster and more fluid :

 

juan83

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[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Chrome max tabs on low end machines with 2GB or less: A few dozen, maybe a little more. FF max tabs on such machines: Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Not everyone uses so many, but FF is one of the few browsers (only major browser globally) that can do it without huge memory imprints. Individual processes for tabs is a huge part of why Chrome uses so much memory in comparison. There are trade-offs to consider to each approach. Regardless, FF could add multi-threading support without having each tab in its own process. Also, Chrome doesn't always have a process for every tab. Grouped tabs often share a process.FF is also usually more stable than Chrome right now (I've had several crashes that forced me to restart Chrome, but I've yet to have such happen to my FF in a long time) and stability can be more important than speed. Besides, it's not like FF is slow anyway, especially with No-script, adblock, fasterfox, etc. They take only a few seconds to install and you're good to go after a few minutes spent setting them up if their defaults aren't as good as you want them to be.[/citation]


there isn't another way to support multi-threading without creating another process (for another cpu), with it's own memory space, and so on... the same goes for the other tabs. Every one of them needs to be another process in order to take advantage of a second (or more) cpus, otherwise, only one cpu will being multi-tasking in between threads in the same process.. and for example, if one of them makes an IO operation, the hole process will wait for the IO operation to get done before continuing.. this translates to FF frozen till IO operation finishes.. (no tab switching, no animation at all, totally freezed)

Chrome uses sandboxes to isolate the memory between tabs (it's more secure) and that's not free in terms of memory
 
[citation][nom]juan83[/nom]there isn't another way to support multi-threading without creating another process (for another cpu), with it's own memory space, and so on... the same goes for the other tabs. Every one of them needs to be another process in order to take advantage of a second (or more) cpus, otherwise, only one cpu will being multi-tasking in between threads in the same process.. and for example, if one of them makes an IO operation, the hole process will wait for the IO operation to get done before continuing.. this translates to FF frozen till IO operation finishes.. (no tab switching, no animation at all, totally freezed) Chrome uses sandboxes to isolate the memory between tabs (it's more secure) and that's not free in terms of memory[/citation]

Actually, FF could be multi-threaded without having each tab (or tab group) as an independent process. It would simply take more work and wouldn't have the advantage of Chrome's tab/tab group sandboxing, but it would have the advantage of using less memory. It's all trade offs about what we are willing to give up for what gain.
 

Pherule

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>"When opening a new tab, users are now presented with their most visited pages"
Would have been better to implement a speed dial. Once you start using a speed dial it's difficult to go back to anything else.

>"Restored background tabs are not loaded by default for faster startup"
YES YES YES - Maybe now that Firefox has done this, other browsers will follow. I used to use an addon/hack to force Firefox to imitate this behavior back around FF v5 or v6. Then the addon broke, but fortunately Firefox integrated it in their settings shortly after, and I've been using it ever since. Good to see that it's now default.

>"Smooth scrolling is now enabled by default"
Anything that brings the UI usability closer to Opera is fine by me. Each browser has its strong points, but the UI is definitely Opera's.

On another note, someone mentioned that Firefox could implement separate tab processes without using separate memory for each tab. This would also be a huge improvement, so long as when one tab crashes, it doesn't bring the entire browser down. This is really the primary reason one would do this anyway. I haven't had Firefox crash on me for a long time, but that's no reason not to improve crash recovery regardless. Of course I haven't been using Firefox all that much lately either, due to the fact that it's still got the most laggy UI out of all the main browsers. After opening Firefox and waiting a bit, I opened a new tab. The new tab took about 10 seconds to come up, during which the entire browser froze solid. I don't see that happening in Opera, ever, and even Chrome lags less than that.
 

marthisdil

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[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]So this senseless version number bumping continues.[/citation]I'm guessing you like Chrome.

I dump Chrome when they got rid of Sidetabs.
 
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