Firefox 3.5 arrives

After some rather impressive RC builds, Firefox 3.5 is all packaged up and ready for public consumption. Mozilla is saying its new browser is more than two times faster than Firefox 3, but what has us more excited is the support for plugin-free "open codec" video and audio playback using Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora-- it's still in its infancy, but the subtle glimpse we've seen so far of a world without Flash video reducing our CPU to jelly is rather compelling.

[Wes Steele @ Jun 30th 2009 11:47AM]

I'm excited. I've enjoyed the RC for weeks now, this is a welcomed upgrade.

[peter @ Jun 30th 2009 11:47AM]

I like my firefox.

[slamEVIL @ Jun 30th 2009 11:54AM]

dude 3.5 screams!!!!

[OneLove @ Jun 30th 2009 12:02PM]

Using the firefox 3.5 system I made $15,000 in only 2 weeks!

[robpetrin @ Jun 30th 2009 12:06PM]

@OneLove:

I lol'd.

Please accept this certificate for "buy one, get one free" internets.

[crogers23 @ Jun 30th 2009 12:10PM]

I love it! Its very fast!

[Templarian @ Jun 30th 2009 12:09PM]

http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/

A lot of others appear to like it also.

[Cheng @ Jun 30th 2009 12:28PM]

Damn! That worldwide real-time tracking page is amazing

[DizWhiz @ Jun 30th 2009 12:28PM]

Oh happy day! I have a wide-gamut LCD and Firefox is the only browser (although with a about:config hack) to support profiles and now it is fast again!

[wjousts @ Jun 30th 2009 12:39PM]

@OneLove:

But wait!! Call now and we'll ship you two Firefox 3.5's, you just pay shipping and handling.

[JC @ Jun 30th 2009 12:59PM]

@wjousts

to soon man, to soon.

[pal @ Jun 30th 2009 1:09PM]

f^>K the e! comments... I tried thrice to reply and nothing... And I don't expect to see this either...... argh... why am I writing this. :-x

[wjousts @ Jun 30th 2009 1:14PM]

@JC: Too few o's man, Too few.

[Josh @ Jun 30th 2009 3:44PM]

Looks like the UK is lagging behind on the real time downloads page. Bad UK.

[benahad @ Jun 30th 2009 5:00PM]

Ironically enough, the real-time stats won't work in IE. Wonder why?

[nick @ Jun 30th 2009 11:48AM]

While I appreciate what firefox has done for the browser market, I can't stand to use it over chrome. Now, I don't tend to use many add-ons so I could easily understand why some people can't use chrome instead, but on the windows platform, chrome is so much faster it's ridiculous.

[NakedNudist @ Jun 30th 2009 9:13PM]

I'll switch over to chrome once It has Adblock

[oo7ev @ Jun 30th 2009 11:52AM]

Not compared to Firefox 3.5. Chrome did beat 3.0, but 3.5 is blazing, plus the Add ons.

[Dking @ Jun 30th 2009 11:52AM]

but chrome is glinchy... I used it for a while and dumped it after a week... indeed it is faster, however it is not friendly with some websites and has lots of crashes.. at least in my case..

[Makavre @ Jun 30th 2009 11:55AM]

@Dking

I was also experiencing the same ...specially with CSS heavy websites ...
not to mention random crashes on certain sites running special modules

(like radio streaming, news tickers, and such)

[TimmyRaa @ Jun 30th 2009 11:58AM]

Yeah, Chrome is nice and fast and shiny, but just doesn't render a lot of stuff I use properly.

[Jorvay @ Jun 30th 2009 12:26PM]

I was starting to lean that way before Fedora 11 came out with a Firefox 3.5 beta. The speed increase was impressive, so I tried it against Chrome in windows and it held up. 3.5 and Chrome are similar in speed to the point where I don't know which is really faster in regular use, and FF still gives me the plugins I want. That being said, I hardly expect Google to stay on their heels with Chrome (especially since there isn't a Linux version yet).

[Brazell @ Jun 30th 2009 12:27PM]

Agreed here. FF is still my primary browser and I love it... but I find myself more and more jumping to Chrome when I need to quickly run to my desk, check one thing online, and then scoot out. And then I discovered the "Inspect Element" feature on Chrome, which is the single most useful web developer tool in any browser/add-on I've used.

[SeeScottRock @ Jun 30th 2009 1:13PM]

@naked nudist

Chrome with privoxy > FF with adblock

you should try it out, zips right along, no ads at all

[Generic @ Jun 30th 2009 2:13PM]

I use both Google Chrome and Firefox. Why? Well Firefox for all the regular browsing and bookmarks (especially since I synchronize them online) and some stuff that require extensions. I use Chrome for my Google Apps and sometimes when the page heavily uses javascript.

I have to admit though that Chrome's interface is better in 2 ways. The 1st is the way tabs appear and the 2nd is the lack of a tools menu. I wish I can remove the tools menu in Firefox without installing an extension for that. Better yet, I wish Firefox doesn't have one.

Since 3.0.0.11 is so yesterday, I resign to update my best friend's number tag, errr, I mean features.

[t3yf5g @ Jun 30th 2009 2:54PM]

I don't like the fact that you HAVE to save a file before opening it with chrome. There is no temporary folder to just "run" the file.

[Crazy J @ Jun 30th 2009 5:31PM]

Since FF 3 is twice as slow as FF 2, then 3.5 should be... the same speed as 3.0???

I used to like FF2 then upgraded to 3.0, and noticed how long it took to startup. I got so annoyed, I sometimes reverted back to IE.

I don't get it, my FF has no add-ons, so why so slow~ ;-(

[the4thheat @ Jul 1st 2009 12:20PM]

I love Chrome and switched to using it as my default, but I think 2.0 is actually a lot less stable. I've been getting lockups on websites (an easy example is the wall street journal's comment page for articles, very easy to lock Chrome up on that). I don't actually get that many render problems but it is pretty annoying when it locks up and the claims about being able to kill each tab independently turn out to be nonsense because every time Chrome has locked up on the wall street journal all the tabs die.

[Corey @ Jun 30th 2009 11:48AM]

Sweet, HTML 5 sounds super useful.

[Thunda Chunky @ Jun 30th 2009 11:56AM]

Bring on Fennec!!!

[oo7ev @ Jun 30th 2009 11:49AM]

Now I need my All in one gestures to be compatible.

[Jeff @ Jun 30th 2009 12:17PM]

May I suggest Fire Gestures? It's compatible w/3.5. Works for me

[Nihility @ Jun 30th 2009 1:06PM]

There's an extension called "Nightly Tester Tools".
It allows you to run unsupported addons on any version of firefox.

If the extension you want wasn't broken by the update (most aren't) then you can use NTT to run it.

[eddy @ Jun 30th 2009 10:42PM]

@Nihility: Is it bad if FF3.5 tells me that Nightly Tester Tools 2.0.2 isn't supported? I'm still apprehensive about making the upgrade since at least four of my most commonly used add-ons aren't supported right now and if Nightly Tester Tools won't be able to help...

[Kamasama @ Jun 30th 2009 11:06PM]

Click on the "See All Versions" link to get to find Version 0.20.0 (a 3.5 compatible, if experimental, version).

[eddy @ Jun 30th 2009 11:58PM]

Ahh, thank you, Kamasama. Much appreciated.

[Pinetreehater @ Jul 1st 2009 9:03AM]

yes, my sentiments exactly. And deskcut too!

[Di3 @ Jun 30th 2009 11:49AM]

Is there support for the Windows 7 taskbar rightclick menu?

[aaron @ Jun 30th 2009 11:56AM]

not that im seeing.... and the aero peek is still not working.

[Chird @ Jun 30th 2009 12:37PM]

The advanced options still aren't in the right-click menu, but my aero peek is working just fine (as it was in the previous version as well)

[Ghen @ Jun 30th 2009 1:01PM]

hard to support a RC like windows 7. Even though the final product will be essentially the same it will probably still require re-programming.

[Kamasama @ Jun 30th 2009 11:14PM]

It seems you're talking about a Jump List, which is currently targeted at 3.6 along with other Windows 7-specific features. For now, you can install Winfox to add that functionality.

[strider_mt2k @ Jun 30th 2009 11:50AM]

Go Team Firefox!

[toxicpiano @ Jun 30th 2009 11:50AM]

I'll only use it if it's faster than Safari 4 on OSX. Does anyone know if it is?

[electron @ Jun 30th 2009 11:56AM]

I run both. FF *might* be a bit slower, but I dare you to tell a difference with just your eyes.

[Birch @ Jun 30th 2009 12:16PM]

In my experience Safari 4 is still way faster than Firefox 3.5 on OS X.

[Joshua Ochs @ Jun 30th 2009 12:24PM]

It's MUCH slower to launch than Safari. Beyond that; not sure.

[crescentdavid @ Jun 30th 2009 1:10PM]

Of course it's slower than Safari. Safari is the bestest, most fastest, most extensible, most useful, most jaw-dropping browser in the history of the world. And just wait until it's next version when it triple or quadruples it's speed and starts tracking your every eye movement in order to anticipate what you want to do next.

[Kelmon @ Jun 30th 2009 2:10PM]

I believe Safari is currently faster but one of the main reasons why I use it over Firefox is because it is a true Mac application and therefore supports OS-level services. However, Firefox 3.5 has (finally - I've been tracking this for years now) implemented support for the System Preferences Network settings so you don't have to go into Firefox to set your proxy server settings if you are behind one. However, at this moment you have to explicitly enable the use of Network Preferences in Firefox's Preferences because it still sets itself with no proxy by default (Mozilla has been issued with a new bug report to address this).

[gib @ Jun 30th 2009 4:04PM]

The launch speeds are still slower (but not NEARLY as much as FF3) than Safari 4.

After installing FF, I asked the same question, so I made a little test. I typed a web address into both browsers, hit enter on one switched to the other, and hit enter again. I cleared out my history, caches, etc. beforehand, so there shouldn't have been too much difference besides the milliseconds it takes to switch to the different applications. I tried loading random content-heavy websites (CNN, MLB, ebay, engadget, amazon, Yahoo, etc.) to see what the differences were in both S4 and FF3.5, and there was *minimal* differences. Some Firefox was faster, most Safari was... by less than 1/2 second or somewhere around there...

Long story short, if you like FF over Safari, it works faster than it did before. If you like Safari, there is going to be no huge reason to switch.