The successor of Firefox 3.0 has entered the Beta development stage as of October 14, 2008. In this context, Mozilla has made available for download Firefox 3.1 Beta 1. The next iteration of the open source browser, codenamed Shiretoko, is making headway in terms of development, having already passed through a couple of Alpha phases. With the 3.1 Beta 1 release, Mozilla is touting various improvements across the browser, including enhancements delivered to performance, web compatibility, and speed.
“This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1,” revealed Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance Engineer at Mozilla. Even though it is nothing more than a development milestone, Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is available in no less than 36 languages for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Mozilla has added a plethora of features to Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 in comparison to the Alpha 2 release. In this regard, the draft specification for Geolocation was implemented along with support for the @font-face CSS property. However, one of the most relevant enhancements is the TraceMonkey new JavaScript engine, which is yet to be turned on by default. Mozilla informed that users would have to navigate to about:config, and then set javascript.options.jit.content to True, after which a browser restart is required.
Sidler added that “new features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include: Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine; added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties; a new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you're switching to; improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search; support for new web technologies such as the < video > and < audio > elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications”.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for Linux is available for download here.
Source: http://akupunyasitus.blogspot.com/
Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 Is here
Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 Mac Version Now Available for Download
The first Beta for Mozilla's Firefox 3.1 has been released to the public. Beta 1 adds one of the coolest features ever to hit the popular web-browser – a new tab-switching shortcut, bringing an enhanced Mac-feeling to the browsing experience.
First of all, everyone should note that Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. Although the beta includes a host of new features, and performance improvements, it is highly recommended that you read the release notes, as well as the known issues before installing it.
And now for the good stuff. Among the new additions in Firefox 3.1 Beta is added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties. The newly-added support for “CSS @font-face” allows users to specify a true type font file that includes a specific font they want to use to render a web page. This was one of the most widely-request features in Firefox, according to the development team. The Mac version, as well as the Windows one, includes @font-face support. Firefox for Linux, however, doesn't, but adding support is underway and “will be done by Firefox 3.1 final,” according to Mozilla.
Also worth noting is that Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is the first beta from Mozilla to include support for the
IE8 Beta 2 vs. Google Browser (Chrome) vs. Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 RC
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, Google Chrome Beta and Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 Release Candidate are all development milestones of the browsers developed by Microsoft, Google and Mozilla. Of course that with the advent of Google Browser (Chrome) on September 2, 2008, the browser market is bound to see additional competition, and in this context, comparisons are inherent.
IE8 Beta 2, Chrome and Firefox 3.1 have already been thrown against one another in arenas designed to evaluate their resource consumption and the performance of their JavaScript engines. But, naturally, there is always the aspect of web standard compliance and support. For this there are two browser measuring tools, namely the Acid2 and Acid3 tests from the Web Standards Project.
"Acid2 tests features that web designers have been requesting. Everything that Acid2 tests is specified in a Web standard, but not all Web standards are tested. Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification. After careful consideration, we have selected and are testing the features we consider most important for the future of the web," reads an excerpt from the description of the Acid2 Test.
As you can very well see from the screenshots integrated at the bottom of this article, IE8 Beta 1, Google Chrome Beta, and Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko Alpha 2 RC all pass the Acid2 Test with flying colors, as should in fact be expected. However, not the same can be said about the Acid3 Test. Actually, quite on the contrary, all three browser versions fail miserably.
"Acid3 is primarily testing specifications for "Web 2.0" dynamic Web applications. Also there are some visual rendering tests, including webfonts," reveals a message posted on the official Acid3 test webpage.
When it comes down to the Acid3 test, Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko leads the pack with a score of 85 out of 100. Google Chrome, although just a first Beta, comes in second with 78 out of 100. And Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is third with an insignificant 21 out of 100.
Google Chrome is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0.1 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0.1 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0.1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.
By: Marius Oiaga
Mozilla: Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 RC Faster than Google Chrome
Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko Alpha 2 Release Candidate is faster than Google Browser (Chrome), according to Brendan Eich, chief architect, Mozilla. The fact of the matter is that the comparison involves only the two browsers' respective JavaScript rendering engines, namely TraceMonkey for Firefox and V8 for Chrome. In the first tests Eich ran with the two JavaScript engines on SunSpider, Shiretoko Alpha 2 RC managed to come on top of Google Chrome Beta.
"We win by 1.28x and 1.19x, respectively. Maybe we should rename TraceMonkey "V10." OK, it's only SunSpider, one popular yet arguably non-representative benchmark suite. We are not about to be braggy. "Don't be braggy" is our motto here at Mozilla," Eich stated.
Google Chrome comes with the V8 virtual machine, which is essentially an open source JavaScript engine built at the Google office in Aarhus, Denmark. According to Google, the V8 JavaScript engine has been designed with nothing but performance in mind, especially when it comes down to the way it handles web-based applications.
"The cornerstones of the V8 design are: compilation of JavaScript source code directly into native machine code; an efficient memory management system resulting in fast object allocation and small garbage collection pauses; and an introduction of hidden classes and inline caches that speed up property access and function calls," revealed Lars Bak, software engineer, Google.
Eich praised the work Google has poured into Chrome, and especially V8. According to Mozilla's Chief Architect, there is even more room for JavaScript performance improvements in Google Browser. But this does not change the fact that, for the time being, TraceMonkey is faster than V8.
"TraceMonkey is only a few months old, (...) which we've built on and enhanced with x86-64 support and other fixes. We've developed TraceMonkey in the open the whole way. And we're as fast as V8 on SunSpider," Eich added.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 is available for download here.
Google Browser Chrome is available for download via this link.
By: Marius Oiaga
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 RC Is Live
While Microsoft made available Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 at the end of August according to the initial plans, Mozilla is falling behind schedule with the development of Firefox 3.1 codenamed Shiretoko. The successor of Firefox 3.0, launched in June 2008, Shiretoko was supposed to debut into beta by the end of August, but this is no longer the case. In fact, not even the Alpha 2 milestone has made it in the past month.
Mozilla has only taken Firefox 3.1 into Alpha 2 Release Candidate stage at the end of the past week, but the build is just a nightly release, and not the final Alpha. However, it seems that Shiretoko will make it into Alpha 2 in early September, although the exact date is yet to be determined. The last signals from Mozilla related to Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 indicated that the development milestone would in fact be delivered by the end of this week.
Following the release of Alpha 1, Firefox 3.1 will move into Beta stage, with the first build planned for October 2008, and then followed by at least another subsequent Beta. Mozilla has already changed its plans for the delivery deadline of the gold bits of Shiretoko, pointing to either the end of 2008, but most likely to the start of 2009. By that time, Microsoft would have already dropped the final build of Internet Explorer 8, with a launch date reportedly set for November.
But with the Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 bits approaching the end of their baking time, Mozilla is closer and closer to introducing a minor update to Firefox 3.0. In this context, Firefox users who are currently upgrading from version 2.0 to 3.0 will continue to update to v3.1. Having debuted the migration process from Firefox 2.0.0.16 to Firefox 3.0.1, Mozilla is now preparing to release version 2.0.0.17 and 3.0.2 simultaneously.
In the meantime, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1, Firefox 3.0.1 and Firefox 2.0.0.16 are available for download here.
By: Marius Oiaga
Resource Hogs: Google Chrome and IE8 Beta 2 Compared to Firefox 3.0.1
Google Browser (Google Chrome) and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 are nothing short of resource hogs compared to Firefox 3.0.1. This is the conclusion presented by researchers from the Devil Mountain Software company, who threw the three browsers one against the other on the same "arena", a Dell OptiPlex 745 (Core 2 Duo @ 2.66GHz) with 2GB of RAM and running both Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3.
The conclusion on IE8 Beta 2 is not that flattering: "What we found was another example of unchecked Microsoft code "bloat," complete with "shirt-bursting, waistline-stretching" memory consumption and the kind of CPU-hogging thread growth normally reserved for massively parallel server farms," a representative from the Devil Mountain Software company stated.
But the fact of the matter is that Google Chrome, is even worse. "What we found was truly shocking: After re-executing our 10-site, multi-tab scenario across all 4 browsers, we discovered that it is Google Chrome, not Internet Explorer 8, that is the true memory consumption leader," the Devil Mountain Software company member indicated.
In a 10-site, multi-tab browsing scenario, IE8 Beta 2 consumed no less than 332MB of RAM, with Chrome Beta also eating a lot of system memory, namely 324MB. By contrast, Internet Explorer 7 only managed to climb as high as 250MB. In this context, it appears that the new technologies, features and capabilities built into Internet Explorer 8, as well as Google Chrome, require more resources than Firefox to perform the same tasks.
"Of course, both browsers look absolutely porcine when compared to the lean, mean Firefox 3.01 (151MB peak, 104MB average working set size). And lest we forget, IE 7 continues to hover somewhere between the fit & trim Firefox and the obesity that defines Chrome/IE 8 (209MB peak, 142MB average)," the Devil Mountain Software company researcher added.
But when it comes down to CPU utilization, both Firefox 3.0.1 and Google Chrome managed to shame IE8 Beta 2, in terms of their hunger. Google Browser took no less than 45% of the processor while Firefox 3.0.1 managed a high of 42%. IE 8 Beta 2 used just 22% of the CPU under XP SP3 and 33% under Vista SP1, while IE7 took only 13% and 24% respectively.
"Both Firefox and IE 7 spawn a relatively modest number of threads (25 and 43, respectively), a fact related to their reliance on a single process instance to handle all tabbed sessions. By contrast, IE 8 spawns potentially hundreds of threads (153 in our latest test round), and spreads them out across its various instances (in our case, 6 discrete copies of iexplore.exe)," the Devil Mountain Software company member indicated, adding that, by contrast, Chrome was managing just 48 execution threads at the apex of the test scenario.
But in the end, the fact that Firefox 3.0.1 is superior, in terms of resource usage, to Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 shouldn't come as a surprise. Both Microsoft and Google's browsers are still in Beta development stage, albeit IE8 is in Beta 2, with the gold version expected to drop in November 2008, and considerably slower than its predecessor.
"Chrome, like IE 8, is a browser designed with tomorrow’s hardware in mind. Its use of a multi-process tabbing model – which, according to Google, helps isolate failures and protect complex web applications (like GMail or Google Docs) – means that it will always use more memory than Firefox, IE 7 and similar, single-process browsers. How such model will hold up under heavy use, especially on today’s hardware, remains to be seen," reads the conclusion from the Devil Mountain Software company.
Google Chrome is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0.1 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0.1 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0.1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.
By: Marius Oiaga
Firefox 3.1 Shiretoko Alpha 1 Available for Download
Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko Alpha 1 is available for download. The fully-fledged Alpha development milestone of the next version of Mozilla's open source browser went live at the end of the past week. In this context, Mozilla managed to slip just a tad from its initial plans to make Alpha 1 available in mid-July. Firefox 3.1 only entered the code-freeze stage on Monday July 21, with the first build up for grabs on July 26. Still, Mozilla is moving full steam ahead to deliver the successor of Firefox 3.0 launched on June 17, downloaded over 8 million times just in the first 24 hours.
According to Mozilla's own release criteria, Firefox 3.1 is meant to be nothing more than "generally usable for testing websites and features". Developed under the codename Shiretoko, version 3.1 of Firefox has not, as of yet, officially been made available for download. Still, the Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 bits were published to Mozilla's FTP servers over the past weekend.
"After a successful freeze on Monday night (and a quick Awesomebar performance regression backout the next morning) we rolled en-US builds for Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1and QA began their tests. A bug (444963) was found in which launching Java embeds on OSX builds would result in a complete browser hang. A workaround patch was generated, so we'll be taking that and respinning those builds. This respin (since builds are being done manually at this point) will likely move our release date for Alpha 1 into early next week. I think that's fine, as I'll be on the ground in Whistler on Monday and can marshall the release from there," stated Mike Beltzner, User Experience Lead.
Mozilla is currently planning to drop the Beta 1 of Firefox 3.1 in August 2008. In this regard, it seems that the Alpha development stage will be short lived for Shiretoko, even though Alpha 2 is already in the works. As early as Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 next month, users will be able to get a taste of all the upcoming features that will be implemented into the successor of Firefox 3.0, according to Mozilla.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.
By Marius Oiaga
Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 Postponed to October 2008
According to Mozilla's initial plans, the first Beta of Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko was slated for availability by the end of August 2008, but this is no longer the case. Firefox 3.1 will only be released in October this year. The beta code freeze for the successor of Firefox 3.0 was moved from August to early September and subsequently to the end of the following month. In this context, Mozilla will take over a month to deliver Firefox 3.1.
“As we discussed a bit at the development call, we're going to be moving the code freeze for Beta 1 to September 30. This schedule adjustment will better allow us to incorporate feedback from the Alpha on exciting features like worker threads before Beta, and adjusts for some of the impact of MU on build and release resources,” revealed Mozilla's Vice President of engineering Mike Shaver.
Following the availability of Firefox 3.1 Beta 1, codename Shiretoko will move to Beta 2 release which is currently scheduled for the end of October 2008. Until Beta 1 drops, Mozilla has yet to release the second Alpha for the open source browser. “Alpha 2 builds will be produced using the code from Aug 19, as before, and we should have a schedule for the build availability and release pretty shortly. (Likely around Sept 2, if you made me guess. Don't make me guess.),” Shaver added.
On the other hand, Mozilla has started delivering Firefox 3.0.1 as a major update to Firefox 2.0.0.16 and will continue to replace version 2.0 with the launch of v3.0.2. Mozilla expects Firefox 2.0.0.16 and Firefox 3.0.2 to be launched simultaneously sometime in mid-September. In parallel, Firefox 3.1 Shiretoko is also being built with the first Alpha builds planned for the end of this week, or the start of the next.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1, Firefox 3.0.1 and Firefox 2.0.0.16 are available for download here.
By Marius Oiaga
Google Browser (Chrome) - the Internet Explorer Killer
If Microsoft is moving into the Cloud, Google is expanding to the Desktop and to the Windows client. The Mountain-View search giant is on the verge of making available a beta version of Google Chrome, a browser initially designed to integrate only with the Windows platform, but which is set to be tailored to additional platforms in the future. Not even out yet, Google Chrome is positioned as an Internet Explorer killer, far beyond what Microsoft's rivals Mozilla and Opera have been capable of doing with their own products.
"This is just the beginning – Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust," revealed Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, and Linus Upson, engineering director.
At the time of this article the Google Chrome bits were not available for download yet. Google is attempting what representatives from the company referred to as a "fresh take on the browser," with every intention to "launch early and iterate." Anchored on the desktop and owning the vast majority of both the operating system and the browser markets, with Windows and Internet Explorer, the Redmond giant is in fact an intermediary between the end users and Google, located almost exclusively into the cloud.
Even though Google claims that Chrome will be made available "because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web," the fact of the matter is that the Mountain View company is making a decisive move to reduce the relevance of Internet Explorer on the world wide web.
At the end of August 2008, Winifred Mitchell Baker, chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation and chairperson and former chief executive officer of the Mozilla Corporation, announced that "we’ve just renewed our agreement with Google for an additional three years. This agreement now ends in November of 2011 rather than November of 2008, so we have stability in income."
So in this context, Google and Mozilla are now obvious partners, on the same front against Microsoft. At the end of August 2008, all the supported editions of Internet Explorer accounted for over 70% of the browser market, according to data from Net Applications, while Firefox was close to breaking the 20% milestone. As a newcomer, Google Chrome will start from zero, but the browser is bound to get traction fast, especially with Google's resources behind it.
The Google Browser features components from Apple's WebKit and Firefox and is a fully fledged open source product. Chrome sports a new approach to the graphical user interface, with the focus on Tabs but also features such as Omnibox, an address bar with auto-completion functionality, as well as a Speed Dial, privacy mode via the "incognito" window, a new method of managing the execution and usage of web applications, and malware protection.
"Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers," added Pichai and Upson.
Update: Google Chrome is available for download here.
By: Marius Oiaga
