Firefox 3.5 is the fastest and most advanced Firefox ever. Here’s how we did it.
The TraceMonkey JavaScript engine brings screaming fast performance to Firefox 3.5. With JavaScript that's more than twice as fast as Firefox 3 and 10x faster than Firefox 2, you’ll be able to see the difference without breaking out your stopwatch.
Results of a SunSpider test on a Windows XP machine
Mozilla Director of Evangelism Chris Blizzard demonstrates the real-world performance characteristics of Firefox 3 vs Firefox 3.5.
We’ve been working hard to make DOM access and manipulation faster in Firefox 3.5- over 2x faster than Firefox 3, in fact. We’ve removed overhead from our code, added new fast-access query and manipulation methods, and added support for new standards.
| * Number of runs of Dromaeo JavaScript performance test completed | |
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88.23 runs |
|---|---|
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244.12 runs |
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458.03 runs |
Online media gets a major upgrade with Firefox 3.5. It includes the world’s first implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support (Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora), allowing web developers to include rich media that’s controlled using JavaScript, HTML and CSS instead of by proprietary technologies. View documentation.
Firefox 3.5 supports cross-site XMLHttpRequests, which means your Web applications can now access material from other servers (as long as the servers are configured to allow it), thus paving the way for new mashups and other online collaborations. View documentation.
Web developers and site designers can now get a more consistent look across all platforms by using downloadable TrueType and OpenType fonts in their designs instead of relying on the fonts installed on the user’s local machine. View documentation.
Knowing that users have the benefit of Firefox 3.5’s dramatically improved TraceMonkey engine, Web developers can build JavaScript-based applications and sites that are faster and more responsive than ever (see Performance section above for more details). View documentation.
In Firefox 3.5, users can share their location with requesting websites, allowing developers to customize their applications so they deliver more useful, more relevant output. Learn more about this feature.
Firefox 3.5 has improved support for JSON, with native handling of JSON objects to make encoding and decoding JSON faster than ever before. View documentation.
Multithreading support finally comes to the Web through the new Web Workers feature, which allows JavaScript code to spawn off threads to handle tasks in the background. Web applications can now take advantage of modern multicore processors. View documentation.
Support for CSS 3 media queries lets style sheets define content appearance more precisely. They now take an intelligent look at the details of whatever device is rendering your content, giving you more control over the final user experience. For example, you can render your site in one way for color printers and another for black and white. View documentation.
Firefox 3.5 supports HTML 5 offline resource caching. This lets Web applications cache static content on the user’s system for reuse instead of requiring it to be reloaded over the network each time it’s needed. The result: much faster web application load times. View documentation.
In addition to these other features, Firefox 3.5 has updated or added other CSS properties, DOM events and tools to build even more beautiful and responsive web pages. Check out the full list on our 3.5 developer’s page.
More ways to maintain your privacy while you’re online:
BrowsingSet your browsing mode to private and leave no trace of past Web history. |
Clear HistoryDelete where you’ve been on the Web after the fact—simple and easy. |
Pick Your PrivacyRemove the history of your visits to a particular site but retain the rest of your browsing history. |
Easy OptionsFirefox asks you straight up about how to store your history and gives you fine-tuned privacy control over the Awesome Bar. |
Tabs in Firefox keep getting better. Turn a tab into its own window instantly—tabs now tear off to stand alone when you want them to. Need a new tab? There’s a convenient button for that, right in your tab bar.
We’ve raised the Awesome Bar even higher. Now get more privacy and customization when you choose to display or hide bookmark or history matches. New autocomplete keystrokes match keywords to your choice of bookmarks, history, titles and tags, or URL. And we’ve tightened up your keyword search experience all around.
Firefox’s site identity button now displays the domain name for SSL, making it easier to notice when you’re entering or exiting a secure connection and to determine who you’re connected to.
Firefox has so many new features, some just defy categorization, like multi-touch gestures for OS X and Windows 7, which make overall navigation easier. And autocomplete is now part of how you bookmark, so tagging is easier and more intuitive. You can even edit tags for a bulk of bookmarks right in the library window. If things crash, Firefox automatically restores your experience. And now you can get recently closed windows back in a single click. Plus, we’ve given your browsing history an easier-to-use timeline so you can quickly find pages you’ve been to before.
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