Firefox 3.5 Review

Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 last week, which was to bring the speed boost much-demanded by everyone.

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 was such a major update that they decided to leap the version number from 3.1 to 3.5 to reflect this.
Let's take a look at the list of new features:
- Faster Tracemonkey Javascript engine.
- Private Browsing mode & Forget About This Site history option.
- Restore closed tabs.
- Some support for HTML5 including audio/video tags.
- New CSS features.
- Geolocation


Private mode was already present in all browsers except Opera. & you can't do both normal/private browsing at the same time. IE, Opera and Chrome could all restore closed tabs. The much hyped HTML5 open audio/video was killed in the egg by W3C. Tracemonkey engine was forced upon by the Browser speed Wars Chrome initiated. So the only new feature is geolocation, which is next to useless if you live in Mauritius.
To sum-up, Firefox 3.5 is what we can define as playing catch-up to the competition.

However, I'm more interested in the performance of Firefox 3.5. To find out, I decided to compare it against the other major browsers on Windows 7 - IE8, Opera 10 Beta 1, Chrome 3.0.190.1 Beta & Safari 4.
Note: It's completely different to what Lifehacker tested, probably because of the huge gap in hardware performance. So the following results are more suited to older machines.

Opera 10 is still in beta. Hopefully this will be fixed in the final version.

IE8 has surprisingly the lowest memory footprint, followed by Safari, Opera & Chrome. However Firefox 3.5, without any extensions, uses more memory by a huge margin!

The above speed test shows that all the browsers are fast enough, with Firefox 3.5 being slightly more consistent.

For Chrome & IE8, each tab having its own process contributes significantly to higher memory usage. However, the biggest culprit is Safari, which proved to be a huge resource hog - even the CPU usage proved to be higher. Firefox 3.5 can somewhat claim to have the lowest memory usage.

Firefox 3.5
Firefox's numbers are misleading! Because once you enable even the most basic of extensions, it's back to good old bloated Firefox 3.0. Memory usage climbs to an average of 100MB on a single tab. It takes around 10-15s for Firefox to load even on a warm startup.
As I had long suspected, but which very few tech blogs reported, Firefox 3.5 is an unfinished product. Mozilla rushed its release to meet the deadline, leaving along most of bugs from Firefox 3.0. There is still a damn permanent bug, observed in Betas & RCs and now the final version, that pops a tab as a new window! There were no memory optimisations and features were left out. Is this all Mozilla have been doing for over ONE YEAR?!? 
It doesn't have Ubiquity built-in, nor the new visual Ctrl+Tab tab switch & neither does it support the next version of Windows!

No support for Windows 7 tab preview!! This one really annoyed me, because I was expecting it.

IE8 does it perfectly.

Even Safari has half-implemented it. The real-time thumbnails display correctly, but you get a black tab when you try to peek at the tab.

Verdict: A faster, but equally bloated Firefox 3.0. Firefox 3.5 SUCKS!!!

 

The Competition
IE8
IE8 renders websites as you'd expect Firefox 2.0 to do & the Compatibility view breaks them even more. & then there's the New Tab lag. Otherwise it's relatively slow, but its great strength is the tab preview on Windows 7.

Safari
Safari tried to copy the features of all the browsers & it failed. Massive memory & CPU hog. Top Sites & History in Cover Flow mode is just a visual gimmick. & it doesn't support extensions. Not to mention that it tries to sneak in iTunes & Quicktime on each update. & btw Safari is certainly not "the world's fastest browser."

Opera
Opera 10 is still in beta & has quite a few design issues - the autofill Wand has a key icon! However in terms of native features, it's probably the best out there, especially with new Turbo Mode & Opera Unite support in future versions.

Chrome
Chrome 3.0 supports extensions! Although, I could get only one to work. With its clean interface & fast browsing speed, Chrome may pose the biggest threat to Firefox (i.e. until they make the Most Visited thumbnails an option).

The best browser?
... doesn't exist! Sorry fanboys, but there is no point sticking to one browser. Each browser has its strength & you try to get the best out of it.
Use Firefox for its extras - AdBlockPlus, Firebug, Greasemonkey & the rest! Use Chrome when you need to do some quick browsing. Use Opera's Turbo mode when your connection is slow (it doesn't work with Twitter). & use IE8 for... downloading the other browsers!

So what's your favourite browser? Let the Browser Wars begin... :P