Desktop highlights:<p>* Drastically improved memory handling for certain use cases<p>* Added a new rendering backend to speed up Canvas operations on Windows systems<p>* Bookmark and password changes now sync almost instantly when using Firefox Sync<p>* The '<a href="http://" rel="nofollow">http://</a> URL prefix is now hidden by default<p>* Added support for text-overflow: ellipsis<p>* Added support for the Web Timing specification<p>* Enhanced support for MathML<p>* The WebSocket protocol has been updated from version 7 to version 8<p>* Added an opt-in system for users to send performance data back to Mozilla to improve future versions of Firefox<p>* Fixed several stability issues<p>* Fixed several security issues<p><a href="http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/09/27/mozilla-firefox-significantly-reduces-memory-use-to-make-web-browsing-faster/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/09/27/mozilla-firefox-sign...</a><p>--<p>Android highlights:<p>* Android-style Copy & Paste<p>* Ability to quit<p>* Use Firefox in your language<p>* WebSocket API<p><a href="http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/09/27/firefox-for-android-empowers-developers-to-build-seamless-web-experiences/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/09/27/firefox-for-android-...</a><p>[Edit] Updated the list of highlights
IMHO quite importantly, this version also includes a list of Microsoft fonts that don't render well with DirectWrite, and will switch back to GDI font rendering for those.<p>On my machine, this fixes the "fuzzy fonts" issue that existed since Firefox 4 if you enabled hardware acceleration.
* Drastically improved memory handling for certain use cases<p>^^ apparently not the use cases I use. FF7's been running for about 12 hours on my win7 box and is using over a gig of ram just like normal...<p>It started off good but then just kept growing over the hours. Nothing really improved here. :(
I thought the point of Mozilla's new release scheme was that we don't have to download anything anymore. The updates just come to us, as if by magic. <a href="https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Updating%20Firefox" rel="nofollow">https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Updating%20Firefox</a>
Great. So now I have to be <i>two</i> versions behind if I need to use GWT hosted mode.<p>(Grrr... yet more evidence of G's gradual sunsetting of GWT.)
>The '<a href="http://" rel="nofollow">http://</a> URL prefix is now hidden by default<p>This can be changed back with browser.urlbar.trimURLs in about:config. They should've provided an option for it.
After Firefox 4 came out I had to install so many extensions to make it feel like 3.6 that it became unstable and incredibly slow. Because Firefox apparently tries to be more like Chrome I decided to switch to the original and I haven't looked back yet. I only fire up Firefox when Chromes built-in developer tools lack functionality compared to Firebug, which is rarely the case. The way Firefox decided to take makes me really sad, as I was a big Firefox supporter, until they screwed me over with the new UI. I hope this is not too off topic, but I never got the chance to comment on the changes.
Great! Love the new canvas renderer. Anyone know when they're planning to add generational GC or other improvements to the GC? It's making some HTML5 games choppy as far as I can tell.
If you're looking for an updated version of Firequery (<a href="http://firequery.binaryage.com/" rel="nofollow">http://firequery.binaryage.com/</a>) I patched and submitted a pull request: <a href="https://github.com/davemo/firequery/tree/firefox7" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/davemo/firequery/tree/firefox7</a><p>Until it's officially accepted you can fork, build it with rake and have yourself a working copy for Firefox 7 :)
why is the channels[1] page never up-to-date? the 'download beta' link still sends 7.0 - if they don't want to confuse people, they should try to be more consisten across their site (which is in general not very well thought-out in my opinion)<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/</a>
Looking at the features, it looks like they're fashioning the UI after Chrome's. The reload/stop button and tabs on top are new, and what is an "Awesome Bar" but an omnibar?