Firefox 3.1-b2 – Big Speed Boost

I gave Firefox 3.1b2 a try last night and am seriously impressed with the speed improvements. The speed-up is probably website dependent, but on many sites that are Javascript heavy, there is no doubt that the new TraceMonkey engine is having a big impact.

Overall stability is good and I have not noticed any leakage yet. Menu opening and closing seems snappier too. You can read all about new features and download it from here:

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.1b2/releasenotes/

or

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Firefox_3.1_for_developers

There’s a bunch of significant improvements to CSS support.

I have not yet tried the privacy browsing mode…that sounds interesting although not very useful for me. For public computers in wifi shops I suppose that might be cool.

Most add-ons for FF3 do not enable immediately in 3.1, although Firebug does so that’s really all I need.

The only negative I see is that once again there is virtually no documentation on how to upgrade a linux client to the beta. Yeah yeah…I know I can do it, but why should linux people have to find their way in the dark without a decent installer or at least a set of bullets. Sheesh…