Firefox 4.0 is out

[jaxa]

Download: https://www.mozilla....US/firefox/new/

Changelog: https://www.mozilla....0/releasenotes/

Standards support: https://developer.mo..._for_developers

 

 

My first thoughts (mainly UI):

 

* Without menu bar, the all-access menu button is ridiculously tiny. The new menu button thing is a copy of what Opera does, but the button is small and has empty space under it for no reason. I restored the old menu bar immediately.

* After closing the browser, I'm no longer prompted to save tabs. Now I have to "restore previous session" from History on opening.

* Although some form of the status bar has survived the major Chrome/Opera influence on this UI, due to the extensions that use it, mousing over links displays the URL above that status bar.

* Refresh button moved and really small.

The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux

* Memory usage doesn't seem to have changed or has gotten worse. Got 9 tabs using 280MB.

* My own scripts are noticeably faster. I'll probably be experimenting with canvas 3d context on this later.

 

Standards (and non-standards):

 

 

 

how to embed SVG and MathML into your content inline.

 

Long overdue.

 

HTML5 hidden attribute - This attribute, common to all elements, is used to hide content in a webpage that is not currently relevant to the user.

 

I needed a 7th way to do this?

 

The <canvas> element now supports the Mozilla-specific mozGetAsFile() method, which lets you obtain a memory-based file containing an image of the canvas's contents. See HTMLCanvasElement for details.

 

Whoa, I could use that to make a canvas-based image editor that saves!

 

Script elements inside iframe, noembed, and noframes elements now get executed, which they weren't in previous versions of Firefox. This is in compliance with the specification, and matches the behavior of other browsers.

 

I had no problem with scripts inside iframes?

 

New CSS transitions support is available in Firefox 4.

 

Interesting, although I haven't had the time to learn about this CSS3 draft standard. In my web pages that have CSS+JS interacting I'm used to thinking of the CSS as static. I guess that when I switch back and forth between two different classes I need to add a transition on both of them in the CSS file. I'll also be waiting for opinions on whether this is an OK thing or an accessibility travesty.

 

Support for -moz-calc has been added. This lets you specify <length> values as mathematical expressions.

 

*drools* I've been waiting for this one for like 5 years, and then in my dreams before that. This is stuff like "width:-moz-calc(800px - 2em);"

 

The preload attribute from the HTML5 specification has been implemented, replacing the previously-implemented (and no longer supported) autobuffer attribute. This affects the <video> and <audio> elements, as well as the nsIDOMHTMLMediaElement interface.

 

Run away, Fidcal!

 

Manipulating the browser history - The existing document history object, available through the window.history object, now supports the new HTML5 pushState() and replaceState() methods.

 

Why?

 

And more cool stuff:

 

Background image subrectangle support / Using arbitrary elements as CSS backgrounds

The -moz-device-pixel-ratio media feature has been added, allowing the use of the device pixels per CSS pixel ratio to be used in Media Queries.

Support has been added for Javascript typed arrays; this allows you to manipulate buffers containing raw data using native data types. Several APIs make use of this, including the File API, WebGL, and WebSockets.

(Lots of touch screen handling events)

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2011 by jaxa

[jdude]

How does it compare in performance to Chrome? I ended up switching from Firefox because chrome opened about 10x faster on my old clunky laptop.

[Bikerdude]

Ive been using FF4 since rc1 and for the most part its an improvement, but there have few nigglers with the new layout..

 

Some of the bad:

• when you double click on the space to the right of a tap this used to open a new tab, to get this function back you have to change the layout so the menu is visable and the are not at the top.
  
• when you right click on a tab you used to get the option "open another tab" - you have to install tab mix addon to get this back
  
• when you have the main menu visable it just looks shit when you have the stock glass ff4 theme.
  
• the FF button, you either like it or you hate it.
  

 

Some of the good:

• Images and websites render a lot faster, eg when you do a google image search in ff3 the subsequent tab/window with the image in a little fore ground popup would takes ages to close, under ff4 its 3 times faster to close said popup window.
  
• start up times are a tad better, but not as faster as mozilla make out. Certainly not as good as IE or anywhere near as fast as chrome - but who in thier right mind would use IE let alone Chrome...
  

[Sotha]

I've used ff4 since my distro upgrade last week. I like it. The only thing that troubled me was the location of the reload button, but once I learned where it is, it is no longer a problem. And I like the added webpage viewing space.

[jaxa]

Still has ridiculous memory leakage. What should have taken up about 250 MB of memory eventually climbed to 1.5 GB.

[OrbWeaver]

Still has ridiculous memory leakage. What should have taken up about 250 MB of memory eventually climbed to 1.5 GB.

 

Are you sure it is actually "leakage"? Memory leakage has a precise technical definition, it is not the same as applications simply using large amounts of memory, which they may be designed to do to improve performance. Unused memory is essentially worthless, after all.

 

If the memory usage continuously climbed, never reduced and the application became more sluggish over time until it eventually had to be force-quit, this would be a strong indication of leakage. However, although I have often seen complaints about FF memory usage, I have never experienced such a problem (maybe because I tend not to keep the same browser open for long periods of time).

[jaxa]

Well I'm aware that some memory is used to allow quick retrieval of stuff like history.back() and recently closed tabs, but after a couple hours of browsing, particularly if you're using YouTube or lots of image (script?) heavy pages, the resource usage will climb for the firefox.exe process. Close whatever tabs are open, reopen, restore the previous session, and the memory will stabilize at a far lower level. This is in contrast to Chrome which seems to recover memory a lot more efficiently, probably because it's using a process for each tab.

 

Come to think of it, I don't see why videos would make a difference since Flash is now handled by a plugin process "plugin-container" for 3.6+ versions. And as I type this my usage is around ~750 MB. I'll see what closing most of 33 tabs (mainly just articles) does. With only TDM Fast Reply open, we're down to 660 MB. On a hunch I clear my cache and history to see what happens. Browser hangs for about 2 minutes. 649 MB when finished. Close, restore, edit post: 89 MB.

Edited March 29, 2011 by jaxa