Firefox 3.5 arrives
By Paul Miller 
posted Jun 30th 2009 11:45AM
posted Jun 30th 2009 11:45AM
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I'm excited. I've enjoyed the RC for weeks now, this is a welcomed upgrade.
I like my firefox.
dude 3.5 screams!!!!
Using the firefox 3.5 system I made $15,000 in only 2 weeks!
@OneLove:
I lol'd.
Please accept this certificate for "buy one, get one free" internets.
I love it! Its very fast!
http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/
A lot of others appear to like it also.
Damn! That worldwide real-time tracking page is amazing
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!
@OneLove:
But wait!! Call now and we'll ship you two Firefox 3.5's, you just pay shipping and handling.
@wjousts
to soon man, to soon.
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
@JC: Too few o's man, Too few.
Looks like the UK is lagging behind on the real time downloads page. Bad UK.
Ironically enough, the real-time stats won't work in IE. Wonder why?
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.
I'll switch over to chrome once It has Adblock
Not compared to Firefox 3.5. Chrome did beat 3.0, but 3.5 is blazing, plus the Add ons.
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..
@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)
Yeah, Chrome is nice and fast and shiny, but just doesn't render a lot of stuff I use properly.
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).
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.
@naked nudist
Chrome with privoxy > FF with adblock
you should try it out, zips right along, no ads at all
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.
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.
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~ ;-(
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.
Sweet, HTML 5 sounds super useful.
Bring on Fennec!!!
Now I need my All in one gestures to be compatible.
May I suggest Fire Gestures? It's compatible w/3.5. Works for me
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.
@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...
Click on the "See All Versions" link to get to find Version 0.20.0 (a 3.5 compatible, if experimental, version).
Ahh, thank you, Kamasama. Much appreciated.
yes, my sentiments exactly. And deskcut too!
Is there support for the Windows 7 taskbar rightclick menu?
not that im seeing.... and the aero peek is still not working.
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)
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.
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.
Go Team Firefox!
I'll only use it if it's faster than Safari 4 on OSX. Does anyone know if it is?
I run both. FF *might* be a bit slower, but I dare you to tell a difference with just your eyes.
In my experience Safari 4 is still way faster than Firefox 3.5 on OS X.
It's MUCH slower to launch than Safari. Beyond that; not sure.
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.
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).
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.
so much for the snark IQ
Depends on what operating system.
On Vista, I've found FF3.5 to be leaps and bounds over Safari 4. On OSX on the other hand, I would expect it to be the opposite, seeing as Safari is a native application.
Anyone else notice a considerable slowdown in performance with 3.5 using Windows 7 RC, as compared to 3.0?
nope. try to completely reinstall firefox and / or create a new profile. but don't forget to backup your bookmarks by saving them to a html file.
recession antidote ??
oh ... wait ....
Writing from 3.5 now, and Ive been really anticipating this release for a while... holding off from jumping onto the RC for the full build. But, honestly, I'm disapointed. It's still freaking slow. From a reboot, I let my comp settle down and then clicked FF and then clicked chrome. I had checked my gmail, work mail, and opened engadget and read this thread in the time it took just for FireFox to open. If Chrome had the extensibility of FF, this would be an easy, but I'm hooked up Weave (just phased out XMarks, thankfully), and I like ABP too. I just wish that FireFox were faster, that's all.
I had unrealistic expectations of new speed for this :(
I kind of agree with starting up... but in areass with slow internet it is tends to work faster then chrome (i have 512kbs, and can sense the difference really well..)
Your Firefox is too slow because you have too many extensions installed--I can almost guarantee it. If not too many extensions, at least a few that are very big in size. I experienced this issue before. It has to load all of them into memory before the FF frame is displayed to you. This would explain why Chrome is faster (for now) because it doesn't have the extensibility. Start FF in safe mode (loads without extensions)--it should start up pretty daggum quickly.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think slowness can also be caused by messed up FF profiles. Perhaps you need to rebuild your FF profile.
in order for your little speed review to be a bit more unbiased ...
you need to uninstall both browsers (chrome and FF)
clean up the clusters on the HDD, (quick defragmentation)
install FF and run it upon your first boot, THEN time it ....
uninstall it once more, and defrag the HDD again ....
once done, reinstall Chrome and repeat the boot-up process ...
time it accordingly, and compare it to your FF notes ....
Brazell;
i think your computer just sucks.
firefox 3.5 really is fast as balls on mine.
it's extremely noticeably so.
why not take this as a sign to upgrage your rig?
Sorry if I post this twice --
Computer is a MBP booted into WIndows, dual core 2.5ghz, 3GB ram. I don't think that it's the slow computer because Chrome runs ridiculously fast. FireFox runs quickly too, just not as quickly and noticeably slower... and I simply wish that it were faster. It's still faster than IE8 and Safari, but I think I just had unrealistic expectations for how fast 3.5 would be compared to 3.1. I was expecting it to run similarly to Chrome.
I'm running two "visible" extensions, Weave and ABP. I'm sure there's other background add-ons running. I could probably boot into Safe Mode every time, but I'd lose a lot of the point of using FireFox.
Makavre -- I don't think that an arbitrary judgement of speed in FF vs. Chrome really necessitates wearing a sterile eco suit and sitting in t a radio-wave free zone doing benchmarks. I'm sure to get the most "unbiased" review of browser speed, I should format my HDD every time I want to check my email, but that's just not realistic.
Dude, booting into Windows on a MBP? You could have saved a thousand bucks and just bought a PC.
I just downloaded and installed it on my work PC and it loads in about 1/4 the time. It's not awful, but when it used to take 20 seconds and now it takes 5, I'd say it's a vast improvement.
Just to comment to my own post --
The extreme sluggedness is caused by Mozilla Weave & FireFox 3.5. It's not happening for everybody but at least two people have commented to me on Twitter that they're having the same problem.
Waiting for a bit till the list of extensions it kills gets a bit shorter. Hopefully, when I do upgrade, Flash HD video will stop killing my computer and Firefox will stop hanging around in processes after I close it. Fingers crossed.
What a way to start my day. Love FF.
running it now, it does seem faster :)
Just downloaded it, and I'm highly impressed.
My bookmarks list doesn't show when I press the "down" key with the cursor in the address bar.. :(
I'm disappointed that final Firefox 3.5 has exactly the same MD5 as RC3, that means they didn't change anything and I was hoping they would turn jit on for chrome too.
This why they call them "Release Candidate", Mozilla will ship the RC as final if there no show stopper.
Uhm, type about:config in the addressbar then type jit in the search box then click on jit.chrome.enable or whatever the name is and change the value to 'true'.
Not that there isn't a reason why it's disabled probably, you'd have to read the notes on mozilla's site for info on that.
firefox blows....
just like your mother. and sister.
considering FF3 was 2x slower than FF2.5 (hello start up time?)... this is welcomed news and par for the course.
FF2.5!
Wow, just downloaded it and Firefox will no longer even open. I'm dead in the water.
"The procedure entry point JS_GetOperationLimit could not be located in the dynamic link library js3250.dll."
Use ccleaner, backup your profile, uninstall Firefox and reinstall. It takes 5 minutes. Just do it and you should be happy. If not write back.
I already like it for faster google maps
I just arrived in my pants
I don't see the download link on the front page.
Softpedia or filehippo. Its not been officially released. But its the final release.
If you have FF3, open it, open the help menu and select update.
Couldn't have been easier :)
Update doesn't work because its not been released yet.
I got a message in my RSS reader saying FF3.5 is official, first thing I did after reading the news page was running a update, and yes, it works. I'm on 3.5 now and I love it already ^^
@NakedNudist
AdBlock? in chrome? like google's going to allow that! no trouble adding it... just take adblock from konqueror source, apply to webkit codebase. highly unlikely I feel for an ad serving company.
Oh yes, the exciting part is support for codecs no one uses but are free so I don't have to pay to use them, which is completely different from the codecs that I use right now that I don't have to pay to use. That part has me over the moon with excitement.
One part I do find exciting is the prospect of real embedded video and audio. Right now all video and audio is shown through browser plug-ins. Not having to run Flash to watch video would make things a bit better for me. However, sites won't use it because there will nearly instantly be a universal media downloader plug-in for the content that uses the embedded video and audio system (if it doesn't ship with one built-in) and sites don't want their video and audio to be so easy to download, they want you to go to the site each time you want to watch it.
is it worth it??
Just curios ... why does a browser require a system reboot?
It doesn't. What the hell did you install.
It didn't on my Mac. But new versions of Safari on Mac do, just not Firefox.
No idea, had the same problem. It doesn't ask for a reboot but I lost all internet connectivity after about 5 minutes of installing Firefox 3.5 but IE, Chrome, ect all worked fine. Restarted and am unbelievably impressed with what this version as offered.
it asked me to close firefox, that's about it.
@why not the LS2LS7?
Safari requires a restart because new versions provide a new version of the WebKit framework that is used by most Mac applications that want to display HTML content, I believe. Firefox doesn't need you to restart your computer because it is the only application using its code.
What I simply can't live without: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340345
Woohoo... no more sjax headaches!
It doesn't. What the hell did you install.
I've been using 3.5.1 for an hour and that's faster than 3.5.
No support for firebug...will have to wait...
There was an update last week try one of the firebug betas. Beta 4 definitely works because I'm using it.
Will do ECS, thanks!