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Tag: Firefox 15

  • Firefox 15 Brings Speed Improvements To Desktop And Mobile

    Firefox 15 may be the most important release of Mozilla’s browser to date. For what seems like forever now, Firefox has had issues with memory. Certain add-ons, when installed, would eat up massive chunks of memory and slow Firefox down to a crawl. There was no solution unless each app was fixed separately. The latest Firefox release includes a new universal solution.

    Firefox 15 has exited its beta phase and is ready for everybody to install right now. The big update in the latest version is that applies a universal solution that will fix all of the memory problems caused by add-ons. I’ve been using the beta for the past few weeks and I can confirm that memory usage is at its all time low for me.

    In other major updates, Firefox 15 finally features silent, background updates. From now on, Firefox will be more like Chrome by installing updates without asking you to close the browser. The browser also features support for the SPDY protocol v3 for even faster Web browsing.

    Firefox 15 is also fantastic for HTML5 gaming as it features a number of WebGL enhancements, including texture compression. We’ve already covered the gaming additions to Firefox earlier today, but just know that it’s quite impressive.

    Like with every new desktop release, Firefox on Android also received a major update today. The team at Mozilla will be focusing on making their Android app even better for the rest of this year so expect the latest version to be a preview of what’s to come.

    First up is a redesigned Firefox for tablets. It’s the same design that Firefox unleashed upon Android phones a few months ago. I’ve been using the redesign on my Android phone and it really does make a world of difference.

    Firefox 15 Brings Speed Improvements To Desktop, Mobile

    Beyond the tablet redesign, the new version of Firefox for Android features almost all the features that are in the desktop version. That includes an enhanced search in the Awesomebar, tabs that can be swiped to close and a host of HTML5 features that bring the mobile browser up to modern standards. In fact, Firefox 15 for Android is finally able to pass RIng 0 on Ringmark with flying colors. It also passes 136 tests in Ring 1 while only failing 26.

    Finally, Firefox for Android supports SPDY protocol v3 for fasting browsing. I haven’t been able to test Firefox on my 30 Mbps downstream Wi-Fi at home yet, but it does seem faster on my 3G connection at the moment. That could be due to reduced latency or interference on AT&T’s end, but I’m willing to bet that Firefox 15 for Android is faster than previous incarnations.

    As of now, Firefox 15 is looking to be the version that might get people back. Mozilla has fixed a lot of speed and memory problems that people were having with the browser a few years ago. The addition of WebGL and HTML5 APIs that are still missing from Chrome’s stable channel is a definite plus as well. If you’re feeling up to it, you can try out Firefox 15 for yourself right here.

  • Firefox 15 Will Finally Fix Memory Leaks Caused By Add-Ons

    Firefox 14 just came out earlier this week and brought some pretty neat stuff with it. At the time, I didn’t think that Firefox 15 would bring anything too groundbreaking to the digital table. I was wrong.

    One of the major problems with current builds of Firefox is that some add-ons can cause massive memory leaks that forces the browser to consume a lot of memory. This slows down your computer which slows down your browser and then you switch to Chrome because you’ve had enough. The team at Mozilla is going to fix that problem in Firefox 15.

    You may be familiar with the MemShrink project that has sought to address the issue of older apps leaking memory let and right. That project is going to be integrated into Firefox starting with Firefox 15 according to Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote. The change should make Firefox 15 faster and less likely to crash.

    It’s good news for Firefox users because Mozilla has found that a lot of the most popular add-ons for Firefox have suffered from memory leak problems in the past. Popular add-ons like Adblock Plus and GreaseMonkey suffer from the problem. Nethercoote points out that the developers have fixed these leaks in the apps, but not all apps have been fixed. That’s what this patch in Firefox 15 is developed for – to fix the leaks when developers can’t.

    So what kind of benefits can we hope to expect with the release of Firefox 15? Nethercote did a test of Firefox 14 and 15 coupled with a known leaky add-on and then ran MemBench, a memory benchmark tool. The difference between the two is pretty drastic:

    Firefox 15 Will Finally Fix Memory Leaks Caused By Add-Ons

    As you can see, Firefox 15 is much better at handling memory and preventing memory leaks caused by add-ons. It should be going into beta soon now that Firefox 14 is out, so look forward to it then to start getting a faster Firefox experience. If you can’t wait, you can grab the Aurora release which contains the fix.