Tuesday, September 27th 2011
Firefox in Warp Zone, Updated to Version 7.0
A little over a month after releasing Firefox 6.0, and quickly following it up with two minor updates (6.0.1 and 6.0.2), Mozilla released its next "major" version, Firefox 7.0 into the release channel. It is now clear that Mozilla Firefox is playing catch-up with other popular web-browsers in some sort of a version number game. The three year old Google Chrome is already into version 14, with version 16 already in the dev channel.
While Firefox users will not be in for a different user interface (it's bad to drastically change it from time to time), Firefox 7 does seem to come with several under-the-hood changes. To begin with, the Windows version features a brand-new rendering back-end that speeds up Canvas, a tweaked Sync system that instantly syncs changes to bookmarks and saved passwords, support for text-overflow: ellipsis, compliance with the Web Timing specification, WebSocket protocol updated from version 7 to 8, and improved support for MathML. The only UI change is that the protocol of the page loaded is hidden. The full URL will be copied when you copy the address in the bar. Firefox 7 is launched for all platforms it's available in: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.
DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 7
While Firefox users will not be in for a different user interface (it's bad to drastically change it from time to time), Firefox 7 does seem to come with several under-the-hood changes. To begin with, the Windows version features a brand-new rendering back-end that speeds up Canvas, a tweaked Sync system that instantly syncs changes to bookmarks and saved passwords, support for text-overflow: ellipsis, compliance with the Web Timing specification, WebSocket protocol updated from version 7 to 8, and improved support for MathML. The only UI change is that the protocol of the page loaded is hidden. The full URL will be copied when you copy the address in the bar. Firefox 7 is launched for all platforms it's available in: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.
80 Comments on Firefox in Warp Zone, Updated to Version 7.0
Everything else works fine, so if they could just fix this damn thing already and i'd be on my way.
However there must be something weird going on because i was testing Opera 11.51 few days ago and i got a very similar thing. Scrolling got a bit choppy and tabs when you open a new one didn't slide open smoothly, but they were all choppy. But the whole thing was nowhere near as horrid as with Firefox. I don't remember Chrome having such problems...
In my case I get lagging with Firefox only if the webpage has lots of Flash stuff, or if I open too many heavy pages (because I have limited RAM), or if I load many pages together. In Chrome I got similar issues but I think it's a memory/GDI objects leak.
If they are going to do something, they should make the change worthy and significant.
Why improve on something kick ass only to cause more overhead and more problems.
I vouch for calling the next FF version FFF (Fire Fox Fail) because they are being dumb with this number jumping.
Fire Fox Infinite!
Anyway I agree jumping to 7 is bad, it should be 6.5 or something else.
chasing version and its like they make noodles. just add water wait for 3 minutes and done
they wanna chase chrome? come on, i feel sick of downloading 20some MB every newer version of chrome that out
why dont they flush the version and mark it with FF11
It is the actual version number of the kernel and stuff in "Windows 7".
It looks and runs just the same as the previous FF IMO.
It takes multiple extensions just to rework 4.x (or whatever they call it today, "7.0") into something as functional as 3.6.x. No advantages over older version, mind you, just to get the same functionality back (things such as status bar, correct order of pop-up menu etc.). They're stupid and they're going to sink what was once a good browser, just like Netscape did almost 15 years ago with transition from 3.x to 4.x and onwards.
:laugh: