Beyond Firefox 3.5: A Sneak Peek at Mozilla's Next Brow

[raj11650]

Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 is off to a running start. The new browser, boasting significant speed increases and a host of added features, was officially released Tuesday morning. By mid-afternoon, the program had surpassed 1.6 million downloads worldwide and was steadily climbing, according to Mozilla's real-time tracking utility.

While most of the tech world is busy getting to know Firefox 3.5, though, Mozilla's engineers are already deep into their next big project: the tentatively numbered Firefox 3.6, codename Namoroka.

The Next Firefox: Meet Namoroka

The next Firefox is currently slated to be released in early- to mid-2010, according to Mozilla's developer notes. That, as we saw with Firefox 3.5 (formerly 3.1), can always change as things moves forward; in fact, Mozilla's already given Namoroka the additional nickname of "Firefox.next" to avoid getting attached to any specific figures.

So what's in store for this mysteriously named new browser? Here are some highlights of what's in the works so far.

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[johngalt]

Interesting - considering I have been using Minefield (3.6a1 nightly builds) for 3+ months....

It is definitely different. that is for sure....

 

[Dinesh]

Lets hope it should be more faster and lightweight than firefox.

 

[johngalt]

Let's see - Fx 1 was faster than pheonix builds, 2 was faster than 1, 3 was faster than 2, 3.5 is faster than 3...I'd say it will definitely not be slower....

IMNSHO, though, I think that continuing to push out i386 builds to the general public will continue to make it slower - CPU / Architecture-optimized builds are the way to go these days - the same exact build non optimized and optimized can show up to 30% speed increases if not more.

 

[raj11650]

Interesting - considering I have been using Minefield (3.6a1 nightly builds) for 3+ months....

It is definitely different. that is for sure....

i tried 64 bit Minefield(not sure of whether 32 bit is available) i couldnt find flash plugin for 64 bit browser.

so back with firefox.

but Minefield was lightning fast!!!

 

[johngalt]

Minefield from Mozilla is always 32bit - 64bit would have come from a third party....

Check out Index of /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk

I have Fx 3.5, Shiretoko 3.5.1 pre-release (nightly) and Minefield 3.6a1 pre-release (nightly) installed - updated every day too.

Until Flash 64bit comes around I am not going to bother with a 64bit browser....but as soon as it does my conversion to 64bit is going to be fairly immediate. Here's to hoping that Adobe gets that out before 7 goes gold

 

[Dinesh]

Talking about flash player in 64 bit browser, will this idea work?

 

[raj11650]

Talking about flash player in 64 bit browser, will this idea work?

is that for 64 bit OS or 64 bit browser

anyway ll try on win 7 whether it works or not!!!

 

[johngalt]

Flash Player support on 64-bit operating systems

 

[Dinesh]

is that for 64 bit OS or 64 bit browser

anyway ll try on win 7 whether it works or not!!!

Hello Raj, its for both.

 

[johngalt]

Sigh.

Flash Player support on 64-bit operating systems

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Ratings:16 of 22 people found this helpful

Issue

Adobe Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser. However, you can run Flash Player in a 32-bit browser running on a 64-bit operating system.
Reason

Adobe is working on Flash Player support for 64-bit platforms as part of our ongoing commitment to the cross-platform compatibility of Flash Player. We expect to provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming release of Flash Player following Flash Player 10.
Solution

To use Flash Player to view Flash content on a 64-bit operating system, you must run a 32-bit browser.

 

[jw12345]

Is it just me, or has Firefox gotten clunkier and clunkier over the years? I've been using it since before it was even named Firefox, but the interface and loading speeds seem dated and slow compared to the webkit browsers. All Firefox has over them is extensions, but I've yet to find any extensions that would keep me hanging around. (Ad-blocking can be done lower than browser level)

Even IE8 looks betters and loads faster (though the UI itself is slower). IMHO, Chrome on Windows and Safari on OS X make Firefox look like a dinosaur. None of the browsers around today are particularly bad, but Firefox (and its code base) doesn't wow me anymore. Not to mention Firefox refuses to follow host OS conventions (On Macs, close tab on right, zoom button works the windows way, not the mac way)