Firefox 5 now available

[Kage]

Now running Firefox 5!

Does anyone notice any speed improvement's?
I'm not sure yet.

Nothing has changed visually anyway
Except, Tools, Options, Privacy tab, now has the 'Do not track me' setting, rather than it being deeper down before in the program.

 

[Chipeater]

I've been running Firefox for the last several months. Last I looked it was version 4, but I ran OS updates to day and it looks like I'm now running version 5. No noticeable difference that I can tell, Firefox has always been very fast since I started using it. I'm running it in a 64 bit Linux OS with 8Gb of RAM and 3GHz quad core CPU off of a SSD, so I wouldn't expect to see much difference.

 

[7D8]

Firefox 5 release notes

Quick List of changes:

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Tuned HTTP idle connection logic for increased performance
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• Fixed several stability issues
• Fixed several security issues

 

[mikee]

why did they jump right to 5.0 instead of what should be 4.0.2? 5.0 seems like there should be a major improvement that is very noticeable. Are they just trying to copy chrome even more by just changing their version schemes like with chrome just going version 1 version 2,3 etc

 

[detox1]

I've noticed a speed increase...
I haven't noticed any other changes, yet...

 

[~Darkseeker~]

why did they jump right to 5.0 instead of what should be 4.0.2? 5.0 seems like there should be a major improvement that is very noticeable. Are they just trying to copy chrome even more by just changing their version schemes like with chrome just going version 1 version 2,3 etc

If anything, Microsoft are copying chrome. The plans for Firefox through the new versions were drawn up to improve the ergonomic experience of web browsing, not to copy Google. If anything, Google have been borrowing the Mozilla ideology for Chrome.

 

[JCB1]

when I upgraded to version 4 I noticed a speed increase so hopefully I will get another speed increase with this version

 

[mikee]

dang I noticed a very annoying bug already. when I go to open a video on youtube in a new tab it opens in the same tab as well as a new tab. It seems to happen with very regularity and never happened in 4.0.1. Might have to start using IE

 

[7D8]

why did they jump right to 5.0 instead of what should be 4.0.2? 5.0 seems like there should be a major improvement that is very noticeable. Are they just trying to copy chrome even more by just changing their version schemes like with chrome just going version 1 version 2,3 etc

it's a marketing trick and Google started it. Generally non techy users pays attention to the version numbers. So 4.05 or 4.13 means 4.blahblahblah... doens't matter. HOWEVER, if I'm a non techy user and I go to get a new browser, why would I want Firefox 4 when I can get Chrome 12? 12 is SO much better than 4 right? So in order for Chrome to compete against IE, they first had to get their version numbers up so that people percieved the browser as more mature. IE 8 vs Chrome 2... Chrome 2 sounds like it needs to grow up.

Another example of this is why did Xbox call their 2nd gen console 360 and not Xbox 2? Because PlayStation was already at 3 and if mom's went to go buy little Johnny a game console for Christmas, they would see both and say, well i'll get PlayStation 3 because Xbox is only a 2 and therefor MUST be better.

So NOW, Firefox is on a 6 week release schedule, to keep up with Chrome and IE. So version 6 in 4 or 5 weeks is going to come out, unless they are late... which has happened with version 4. I wish them the best!

 

[cyganista]

I have also noticed little speed increase. Unfortunately some of my plugins don't work with newer version... Why developers just can't provide new versions backward compatible with older plugins?