Mozilla Foundation launches Firefox 3.6 web browser

 

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Posted on 22 Jan 2010 at 12:09

The Mozilla Foundation has announced the latest version of its free, open source web browser, Firefox 3.6. This latest release promises to bring a leap in performance thanks to the latest Gecko rendering engine, which has been in development since early 2009, plus improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.

It also adds user-friendly graphical theme packs called Personas, which can be downloaded from a central gallery and applied with a single click. The personas gallery already contains thousands of designs, ranging from celebrity fan themes to themes promoting causes such as Amnesty and Greenpeace. You can preview a theme by simply moving your mouse over it, and install it by clicking once.

In our quick and admittedly unscientific tests, we found Firefox 3.6 to be much quicker than previous versions, but still not quite as quick as Chrome at loading multiple tabs, especially when you include pages that make heavy use of JavaScript, such as Google Docs. In everyday use however, it feels quicker in some respects, which is due to some clever optimisations and bug fixes, such as the implementation of a new HTML5 attribute for script tags that lets developers load scripts one at a time, rather than all at once.

As well as Personas, another Mozilla side project, Weave, has almost reached version 1.0 status and the second release candidate can be added to Firefox 3.6 as an add-on. Weave lets you synchronise your bookmarks, history, open tabs and passwords between different installations of Firefox, keeping them on a secure central server and updating them each time you load your browser. This lets you have a consistent browsing experience across your work and home computers.

The last release of Firefox, version 3.5, was downloaded almost five million times in the first 24 hours of its release. Many internet users are turning to alternative browsers such as Firefox after recent reports of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the web browser most Windows users go to by default. Mozilla revealed on Tuesday that German users had downloaded 300,000 copies of Firefox over four days after the German government issued a warning against the use of Internet Explorer. With a new version, Firefox may see its figures soar in the next few days.

Author: Barry de la Rosa