Is Firefox 3.5 Really Faster?

[rob86 2]

For all the advertising FireFox did about their ultra fast firefox 3.51 from my initial testing it seems not only slow on XP, it's but slower than 3.0! It still opens up slower than almost every app I use which is my normal experience with FireFox and not too different slower or faster from 3.0, but I noticed a serious decrease in tab switching speed. I have no idea why as I never noticed any delays when switching tabs in 3.0 but with 3.51 it takes about 1-3 seconds to change the focus to another tab. It's so annoying I'm thinking of going back to 3.0 even though I was pleasantly surprised most of the extensions I use were already updated to support 3.5. I'm using Tab Kit and never tried FF 3.5 without it to see if the tab switching was laggy-- but I don't want to disable it. I like Tab Kit

[FruitRocks 0]

I personally love FireFox 3.5. It is so much better than internet explorer, although google chrome comes up in one of the fastest. It also has "private browsing," meaning that it will not save your internet history, cookies, etc. If you are using any extensions with an earlier version of firefox be sure to check if they are compatible with the newer version. and yes, there is a slight difference in speed, but it is not that big.

[puneye 0]

I am also Mozilla Firefox User and I also Jump from Verson 3.0 to 3.5.2 and I think it is improved version. It loads faster than 3.0.x version. I was in trouble when I scanning some documents either my scanning software or firefox hangs itself so have to run a program each time, it showed 99 % memory used. But it is works fine on me now. I can run both program simultaneously.

[Alex Cicala 0]

Truthfully I think that the only thing that effects browser speed is your connection to the internet. I don't see how an optimized browser can make the net go faster. That still doesn't put me off using Firefox.

I like the new features and fixes/changes given to Firefox 3.5.2 [my current version]. Most of the skins and addons are compatible since version 3.0.x. I have never regretted using Firefox, I used to use Opera and Orca Browser.

I also loved the response to the Firefox release date, Although I never knew that 3.5.x was coming out, I just got a notification of a version upgrade on the day it was released.

[truefusion 3]

Hmm? I don't recall them advertising that kind of performance. I only remember them advertising page rendering performance, not start-up or GUI performance. Considering the overall program performance, 3.5 is about the same as 3.0. Sometimes they make the kind of performance modifications you were expecting, though you may not see much of an improvement for your system. But they'll be more visible on older systems.

[rayzoredge 2]

Hmm? I don't recall them advertising that kind of performance. I only remember them advertising page rendering performance, not start-up or GUI performance. Considering the overall program performance, 3.5 is about the same as 3.0. Sometimes they make the kind of performance modifications you were expecting, though you may not see much of an improvement for your system. But they'll be more visible on older systems.

x2

No actual performance changes in my eyes, although I'm running FF 3.5.2 on a decent system with company-provided cable Internet.

[rob86 2]

I found out that extensions do have a big effect on the speed at which FF runs though I think it's only certain extensions that cause drastic slow downs. I disabled all my extensions and started firefox and it suprisingly fast. I then enabled most of the more important ones a few at a time and my firefox seems to work much better, a little slower, but not frustratingly slow. The weird thing is, FireFox 3.0 was never slow with the extensions loaded. They did indeed advertise faster start ups specifically, I think saying that 3.5 started in half the time 3.0 did and they also listed 2.0's startup speed. They never specifically said, "Fast GUI!" but they did call themselves the fastest internet experience or something which in my opinion and when they say experience I take that to mean tab switching since my experience was very unenjoyable having firefox freeze up every time I clicked on something.I wasn't talking about the speed a webpage loads anyway, I'm aware that being on dialup makes page loading slow, but I was talking about tab switching and startup times. And Opera IS faster than Firefox. I don't know how or why it's faster, but it is. Everything about it is faster than Firefox and it makes it very hard to like Firefox as much as I want to. It's a really big difference when you're on a slow connection like mine. I should do a little test and see how much faster Opera is. I like Firefox because of all the extensions, and the ability to really customize it. I've become quite attached to all the extensions, though when I'm in a hurry I sometimes start up Opera for a quick google search. Like I said earlier in the post, I did manage to speed up Firefox by disabling a lot of extensions so I've got no problems with it now.

[SpiderVV 0]

For me it's been faster but Firefox 3.0 was more stable. I've been upgrading thru all versions and I seem to see a leak in all of the 3.5 edition that's up with website authentication. Sometimes if I start to type something, it seems it automatically clicks Submit but I don't even click any shortcut. Happens with almost all SSL websites, but it's not much of a hassle, only when it refreshes the page when it says "Wrong password or whatever".If I try IE it works, but overally Firefox 3.5 is faster, even for *$#!!!/* net speeds like the one I am using right now in my grand parents.

[Phoenix.Illusion 0]

For all the advertising FireFox did about their ultra fast firefox 3.51 from my initial testing it seems not only slow on XP, it's but slower than 3.0! It still opens up slower than almost every app I use which is my normal experience with FireFox and not too different slower or faster from 3.0, but I noticed a serious decrease in tab switching speed. I have no idea why as I never noticed any delays when switching tabs in 3.0 but with 3.51 it takes about 1-3 seconds to change the focus to another tab. It's so annoying I'm thinking of going back to 3.0 even though I was pleasantly surprised most of the extensions I use were already updated to support 3.5. I'm using Tab Kit and never tried FF 3.5 without it to see if the tab switching was laggy-- but I don't want to disable it. I like Tab Kit

Well actually I haven't noticed its faster. I suppose they have tweaked it to load web pages up faster but that's about it here is what is new:

More Secure
* One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to. (Try it here!)
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. (Try it here!)
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!)
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. (Try it here!)
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
* Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
* Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use

* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
* Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
* Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
* Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you're seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
* Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. Create and restore full backups whenever you want.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

* Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
* Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
* Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.

Thanks to firefox for providing this information.

Notice from truefusion:

Added quotes for material that was taken from http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/3.0/releasenotes/

Edited August 22, 2009 by truefusion (see edit history)

[Ne0n 0]

For all the advertising FireFox did about their ultra fast firefox 3.51 from my initial testing it seems not only slow on XP, it's but slower than 3.0! It still opens up slower than almost every app I use which is my normal experience with FireFox and not too different slower or faster from 3.0, but I noticed a serious decrease in tab switching speed. I have no idea why as I never noticed any delays when switching tabs in 3.0 but with 3.51 it takes about 1-3 seconds to change the focus to another tab. It's so annoying I'm thinking of going back to 3.0 even though I was pleasantly surprised most of the extensions I use were already updated to support 3.5. I'm using Tab Kit and never tried FF 3.5 without it to see if the tab switching was laggy-- but I don't want to disable it. I like Tab Kit

I don't think it has changes at ALL.
I think its got worst, What do you think.
Edited August 22, 2009 by Phoneix (see edit history)

[kleong 0]

From personal experience, loading a web page on different will have different loading time. For me, I find that chrome loads the fastest, followed by IE and then Firefox. I am not sure if that is what you experience as well. Wondering in those plugins like firebug and etc will slow down the loading time.

[alexthemans 0]

From personal experience, loading a web page on different will have different loading time. For me, I find that chrome loads the fastest, followed by IE and then Firefox. I am not sure if that is what you experience as well. Wondering in those plugins like firebug and etc will slow down the loading time.

A Hong Kong IT magazine called PC Market has done a performance test for IE8, Firefox 3.52, Chrome 2.0.172.43 and Opera 10. In browser initalization test, Chrome is the fastest, then IE8 follows. However, the results are very comparable.