Firefox 13 Released - Homepage + Speed Improvements

http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/06/05/firefox-has-a-redesigned-home-page-and-new-tab-experience-that-make-browsing-the-web-faster-and-easier/

by daleharvey • 14 years ago

144 82 14 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

superxor• 14 years ago

Obligatory:

Release Notes: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/13.0/releasenotes/

Complete list of changes: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/13.0/releasenotes/bugli...

This gotta get me some karma!

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

This is the first release with SPDY enabled by default. Once most Firefox users have updated, about half of all web traffic will be from SPDY-enabled browsers.

sp3323• 14 years ago

Here's a tiny restartless addon that shows if the page you're on is using SPDY: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spdy-indicato...

shmerl• 14 years ago

Thanks! That's useful.

thomasnext• 14 years ago

Citation needed! What about users of old versions of Chrome, for example?

jevinskie• 14 years ago

Aren't Chrome users almost always using the latest version because of the auto-update by default?

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

Chrome has had SPDY enabled for at least a year now -- since around Chrome 10, I think? And according to Statcounter measurements for this month to date [1], 28.75% of all page views currently come from Chrome 19.

From the same Statcounter numbers, 17.27% of all page views are from Firefox 12. So that's over 46% of page views this month using the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. And another few percent are just one or two versions behind. So a couple of months from now, 50% of page views measured by Statcounter should come from SPDY-enabled browsers, especially if IE marketshare keeps shrinking rapidly.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201206...

sp3323• 14 years ago

Chrome auto-updates, so there are almost no users of old versions of Chrome. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/may-br...

qeorge2• 14 years ago

Note: if you're upgrading Firefox and you didn't have SPDY enabled already you'll have to enable it manually.

(about:config, network.http.spdy.enabled = true)

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

This isn't true. If you had the pref set to the default value before, it should change to the new default value when you upgrade.

[Note: I am a Firefox developer.]

0xABADC0DA4• 14 years ago

Score one for mediocrity. Microsoft's Speed + Mobility version of Spdy has some good improvements, but I guess Google will just declare their version to be the standard.

Also Spdy only had 23% faster page load times than non-pipelined HTTP (in other words, enabling networking.http.pipelining is just as good).

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

SPDY is not something that Google just implemented and froze as a standard. Mozilla and others are still working on the SPDY spec in the IETF, and we're happy to see improvements. Mike Belshe continues to work on evolving the SPDY protocol even though he no longer works for Google. The latest development builds of Chrome and Firefox have just been updated to SPDY draft3.

cpeterso2• 14 years ago

HTTP Pipelining has its own issues, such pipeline requests being processed FIFO and stalling queued requests.

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper

Lots of detail about SPDY for those like me who didn't know.

illumen• 14 years ago

Discussion on "Why new firefox 13 'load tabs on demand' is bad UX.", some solutions to the problem, plus comments from a chrome developer on why they moved away from this behaviour can be found here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069535

daeken• 14 years ago

While I think this is a good submission (and upvoted it, despite being a Mozillite), it's in bad form to post comments on one submission to drive clicks to one of your own, even if it's related to the high-level topic, unless it's a continuation of a dialogue that's going on in a thread.

ars• 14 years ago

BTW despite what the article says this is not from firefox 13 - I've had it at least since 12, and probably even earlier.

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

The option was disabled by default in Firefox 12 and earlier; it is enabled by default starting with Firefox 13.

terhechte• 14 years ago

The one reason why I moved back to Firefox (mostly) after years of Safari and Chrome was the "load tabs on demand" feature. I love it.

ck2• 14 years ago

Also, FF 14b6 out tomorrow (I think).

14 works great, no problems with any of the dozens of extensions I use.

rdsubhas2• 14 years ago

Opera introduced Speed Dial in 2007. I can't believe that its getting published as a major feature today.

On a side note, I find the Chrome New Tab page much cooler. We can drag and drop favorite sites at the bottom of the new tab page (where it shows "Most Visited" and "Apps") and it creates our own customized group.

Edit: Fixed typo

idleloops• 14 years ago

Well I don't quite follow this behaviour. But thanks, I hadn't clicked there before.

rdsubhas2• 14 years ago

Yes it is quite undocumented, this is the best I could find: http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/lqlO-zYGki4/zTT...

ditoa• 14 years ago

Upgraded last night. Using it today it feels slightly lighter to use, it is noticeably faster in general and has some nice UI polish that has been needed for a while. Still my browser of choice. The new tab page got disabled right away though, don't like it in other browsers and don't like it in Fx. Thank god for about:config :)

jyap2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I don't like the New Tab page either.

For those reading, you can disable the interface entirely (click the grid button in the top right corner).

ohgodthecat• 14 years ago

You don't have to go into about:config to disable it all you have to do is click the little 9 boxes in the upper right of the newtab page.

mmuro• 14 years ago

Being able to lock the pseudo class on the inspector is pretty freaking great (though not quite as intuitive to figure out how just yet). Also, a very happy change is that the panels remember what you want to have open.

Next on the list should be further integrating the console.

pacomerh2• 14 years ago

Chrome is faster, has great extensions, why would I use Firefox?.

riffraff• 14 years ago

the awesome bar is still better than the omnibar IMHO, but that's the only thing I can think of. Some extensions may still be better in firefox land too.

But, I too left firefox behind, mostly because of lack of OSX keychain integration, and I have very little hope that mozilla is going to fix an issue 11 years old anytime soon[0]

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400

azakai• 14 years ago

> Chrome is faster, has great extensions, why would I use Firefox?.

Firefox is more open, has new JS language features before anyone else, why would I use Chrome? :P

jonathansizz• 14 years ago

I find the current Firefox to be equal to Chrome in terms of speed, it uses less memory than Chrome, it has much better extensions (including adblock, noscript and vimperator, which are all nicer than their Chrome equivalents), the UI itself is also more configurable (e.g. toolbars, add-on bar; also, we can't even have a bookmarks sidebar in Chrome! In general, if I don't like some aspect of Firefox I can change it, whereas this is not always the case with Chrome), and I like to keep my data to myself as far as possible.

For me, the best thing about Chrome is that it's arrival on the browser scene motivated Mozilla to redouble their efforts, especially in terms of performance and stability, and this has borne fruits with recent iterations of Firefox.

super_mario• 14 years ago

Pentadactyl, Firebug are mostly the reasons I use Firefox. Also I like my privacy.

pacomerh2• 14 years ago

Chrome dev tools are equal as powerful, and regarding the other comment about speed. I have tried the new firefox and chrome still flows better. The reasons posted here are not sufficient, sounds like the firefox users are just loyal.

TwoBit3• 14 years ago

IMO Chrome is great, but Firefox has more features that I like. The minor speed differences are inconsequential and FireFox is faster at some things anyway.

Erunno8• 14 years ago

Depending on the site page loading can still badly affect interface responsiveness. There are a number of projects to alleviate this under the umbrella of the Snappy project[1] but for all the work the Mozilla devs have have put into it, Firefox as of now (Fx13) is still nowhere near as smooth as its biggest competitor for regular use cases. I'm hoping that the SuperSnappy research project[2] will produce usable results though.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/Snappy [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=718121

derleth• 14 years ago

> Chrome is faster

Slower for me. Hits the disk more.

> has great extensions

Not nearly enough. Not by half.

Also, there's the issue of respect: Chrome doesn't respect me nearly enough to let me configure my browser to how I want it. I did away with the speed dial 'feature' in Firefox; I can't do that in Chrome. Not possible. That's just one example of many.

Firefox respects me. Therefore, I use it.

gaving2• 14 years ago

installed on osx; launched; still no lion scrollbars or full screen support

honestly mozilla?

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

Lion full-screen (http://bugzil.la/639705) is coming in Firefox 14, which will be released six weeks from today (https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar). You can use it now on the Aurora channel (https://mozilla.org/firefox/aurora/) and in a few days it'll also be on the Beta channel (https://mozilla.org/firefox/beta/).

Lion-style scrollbars (http://bugzil.la/636564) are still in progress. You can test them on the UX branch: https://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mozillas-ux-nightly...

tomflack2• 14 years ago

I don't get Mozilla. The first OSX Lion developer preview came out in March of 2011. This kind of (very) slow adoption of platform improvements is the worst way to win users, and by extension power, to fulfil their mission of a free and open web.

I honestly can't think of an excuse for not supporting Lion specifics this late in the game.

gaving2• 14 years ago

http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/stable-ch...

Mountain Lion.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

If you don't like the homepage/new tab thing (I don't), as there appears to be no options pane thing to disable it, do this:

1. visit about:config

2. Search for browser.newtabpage.enabled

3. Set to false

mbrubeck11• 14 years ago

You can also just click on the icon in the top right corner of the page to disable it.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

Thank you - much easier :)

tedsuo• 14 years ago

I noticed they added a "Most Visited Pages" display when you open a new tab, much like Safari's "Top Sites", and like with Safari it's turned on by default.

I wonder how many people accidentally have their porn habit outed the first time they or a family-member/coworker opens the new version? Surprise!! :D

nhebb• 14 years ago

Reminder: If you're like me and don't use FF anymore for anything but testing, this is a good time to open it up and apply the update. This will save you the frustration of having the update applied the next time you're in the middle of working.

fyolnish• 14 years ago

They still haven't merged the tabs into the titlebar on os x..

Erunno8• 14 years ago

FWIW if you switch Firefox to small icon mode, hide the addon bar (previously status bar) and the bookmark bar, then Firefox only has a few vertical pixel less than Chrome for the content area. That's how I use my Firefox at least.

yuhong• 14 years ago

This release finally ends support for Win2000 due to the move to VC2010, BTW.

mjcohenw• 14 years ago

I use Firefox on a 2011 MacBook Pro/Lion and I find that memory usage constantly increases, even when very little is going on (starts at about 200MB, soon reached 500MB). Because of this, I have switched to Chrome, whose memory stays about 200MB.

My fingers have gotten used to doing command-option-shift-click which opens a new tab AND switches to it.

TwoBit3• 14 years ago

Unless you have a leaking plugin, Firefox is likely doing that for performance. You have a lot more than 500MB RAM, right? Why not take advantage of it?

Firefox 13 Released - Homepage + Speed Improvements

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