Firefox 3.5 is out

Argh. I want to love Firefox 3.5. Really, I do. Modern web standards. Faster. Smaller memory footprint. Native Aqua widgets (effing _finally_).<p>The problem is, compared to Chrome and Safari, it's a dog.<p>I've been running the nightly (Shiretoko) for weeks now, and, like everyone else, I'm hopelessly addicted to various extensions during heavy browsing sessions (development, etc).. but when I want to pop up a browser, check something quickly, and move on with my life, Safari is the browser of choice. The initial launch speed and JS performance are orders of magnitude faster.<p>Gecko is a great layout engine, but my gut feeling is that XUL and friends are holding it back. Agree? Disagree?

Some rough figures:<p><pre><code> IE7: 0% (base, 1x) IE8: 24% faster (1.24x) FF3: 73% faster (1.73x) FF3.5: 183% faster (2.83x) Opera 10: 196% faster (2.96x) Chrome 2: 354% faster (4.54x) Safari 4: 427% faster (5.27x) </code></pre> Personally I use Safari because I prefer WebKit (it being fast is nice too), but I'm very impressed with Firefox 3.5. It makes a very good development environment with all the extensions available for it! :)

Here's a short python script to optimize your firefox databases: <a href="http://pastebin.com/m155f9e6e" rel="nofollow">http://pastebin.com/m155f9e6e</a><p>Close firefox, run it, be amazed. People have been claiming phenomenal speed boosts (mostly if your profile has aged a bit).

I thought their new stats page was really cool:<p><a href="http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/" rel="nofollow">http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/</a>

Bah, the release notes link gives me a 404... here is the cached version of the RC release notes from last week...<p><a href="http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:P21aJ836YuQJ:www.mozilla.com/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/+firefox+3.5+release+notes&#38;cd=1&#38;hl=en&#38;ct=clnk&#38;gl=us&#38;client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow">http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:P21aJ836YuQJ:www.mozilla...</a><p>EDIT: A much better list... <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers</a><p>EDIT#2: The What's New page that loads after installing also 404's...

the new firefox is pretty fast and the new tab design looks good. I think I'll pause google chrome for a few days.<p>update: if you have issues with old addons in firefox 3.5, John Resig suggests you to do the following: Open about:config, right-click new boolean 'extensions.checkCompatibility', set false, restart. (via <a href="http://twitter.com/jeresig/status/2404695608" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/jeresig/status/2404695608</a>)

I'm still running Ubuntu 8.10, anyone get the release running there yet and want to share how they did it? Ideally I'd like to avoid trashing my old 3.0.11 install or profile...

Since installing 3.5RC and even upgrading to 3.5 my login state for sites hasn't been respected by FF. I have to log back into every site I visit every time I restart firefox - anyone have any suggestions as to what I can try to fix this? Cookies are on, passwords are stored and I'm not in privacy mode.

Private Browsing !!!<p>yeah.. but when I hit Ctrl-Shift-P It just overrides the current window ! And I have to hit that again to the public firefox browser. !<p>That just seems weird ! Atleast thats what the default does

what the freck happened to using cmd/ctrl + arrows to organize the tabs?? i usually have dozens of tabs opened and i used that feature to prioritize them! now they took it away and it's frecking annoying

It feels a lot faster, at least on Mac OS X. The interface seems to be much more responsive as well. It's nice to see they have focused on performance :)

I tried out the &#60;video&#62; tag on the 3.5 About page, but it still uses Flash. I thought the whole point was to go native and avoid Flash?

The Acid3 test page is currently down. Coincidence?

Great, 4 of the top spots taken up by Firefox, PHP, Wireshark, and Virtualbox release notes. I know we've had this debate before, but I don't see why anyone wants 15% of their news to be release notes. If I care about these projects (and I do), I'll subscribe to a related RSS feed or mailing list. The only possible benefit I see is some useful discussion about new features, but honestly that's hardley enough benefit to compensate.<p>I've only seen the volume of release notes go up in the past month. I don't think we should reward the people that post them with karma. That will just encourage newer users to post more release notes for more and more tangentially related products. I wouldn't be suprised to see some scripts pop up that automatically post release notes of significant projects (as we've seen in the past with pg's essays). Heck, even if we restricted outselves to release notes of software used by YC companies, we'd still be overwhelmed.<p>I know it's an unpopular opinion, but honestly we can do better.<p>EDIT: For those claiming that they are in it for the dicussion, point me to any useful discussion so far in any of the 4 mentioned stories. As of this writing I count 2 or 3 useful comments, and maybe 1 useful discussion. So I don't buy it. Rephrasing the release notes certainly doesn't count.<p>Firefox: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680853" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680853</a><p>Virtualbox: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680692" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680692</a><p>PHP: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680649" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680649</a><p>Wireshark: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680286" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680286</a>