New Firefox 7 Beta Now Available
Written by Alan Thursday, 18 August 2011 06:55
When Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 6 final a few days ago, we speculated about the Firefox 7 beta release. Today, that speculation turned into fact as version 7 of the web browser hit the beta channel. Users of the beta channel will need only to click Help in Firefox and then choose About Firefox. From here you should get an option to Apply Update.
Like all Firefox updates, there can be compatibility issues with some plugins. In this case, one of our most used extensions, TabCloud, was a victim. What do you get for this trouble? Here’s a list from Mozilla of the improvements and changes.
- Optimized Memory Use: Reduces memory use and improves performance areas including responsiveness, startup and page load time, even in complex websites and Web apps
- Improved memory management: The JavaScript garbage collector works more frequently to free up memory and improve performance when you have many tabs open or keep Firefox running for a long time
- Enhanced Firefox Sync: Your data syncs faster when a bookmark or password is added or changed
- Azure Direct2D for Canvas: Helps Firefox speed up HTML5 Canvas-based animation rendering
- Web timing spec: Enables developers to measure page load time and site navigation so they can identify how to make website performance improvements
- CSS 3 Text-Overflow: ellipsis: Additional way for developers to display CSS 3 text that overflows the layout area
- Telemetry: Install this add-on and opt-in to report browser performance data and help improve future versions of Firefox
The new beta is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Android.
