Firefox 3.6 Will Focus On Desktop Web Apps, Speed, And No-Restart Extension Installation

@jupiterthunder:

Yeah same as me.

Gilbert Capulong

I'd like to see the one process per tab idea.

@hank18: They bumped up the version number of 3.1 to 3.5 because they are adding a lot of new features and 3.1 didn't seem like it showed the value of the new features.

@dadgetboy: Erm...oh...hehe! How about a little research right? Whoops...

hank18

@hank18:
there's not gonna be a 3.1... the next release is 3.5 :D

dadgetboy

3.5? Where's 3.1 we've been promised for so long??

hank18

Finally NO RESTART

Gilbert Capulong

Hooray for no restart installation. I love extensions but I always dread the restart. It's minor, but I'd rather not have to do it to get that extension pumpin'.

jupiterthunder

@Rolcol: I feel like that would drastically change Firefox itself at the base level. Chrome was created with that feature in mind from day one, so it works with them, but it would require a lot of work to change the existing Firefox.

That said, I honestly don't see the overall point in the separate processes. I know that when one crashes, the rest of them stay open, but just yesterday, Firefox crashed for no good reason, but it was able to recover all of my tabs in two windows just fine. I mean, I guess if your progress in something gets lost, but how often does that happen?

Platypus Man

talking about 3.5 when 3.1 isn't even out yet? lets focus on 3.2 lol

Oscar Ayala

Face gestures anyone? ...

I kid, I kid. I'll agree with Rolcol and say 1 process per tab would be nice. No more worrying about crashing. Other than that most features are covered by extensions anyways.

zmnatz

@jupiterthunder: Same here. I don't even use that many extensions, but whenever I install/uninstall a new one, I hate the restart.

Platypus Man

I'd like to be able to have a proxy set per tab. Opening up a new instance using -no-remote and multiple profiles is OK, but it would be slicker if you could just set up per tab proxy rules.

Naim Falandino

I think this is what they refer to as a "next-next" on Hannah Montana. :)

Seriously though, what I'd like to see is that ability to view flash, and log into websites in TBird. (I know it's not Firefox, but it's Mozilla.)

RickS

N0-Restart Extension Installation? That's the greatest advancement in browser technology since Firefox itself.

amIthe1

One process per tab and Proxy set per tab would be awesome!

loled

EXTENSION SYNCING PLEASE GOD PLEASE

NotHellTempest

@Oscar Ayala:
Actually, 3.1 has been renumbered to be 3.5. So they're the same thing.

veritascitor

@Oscar Ayala:

Swing and a miss...

NotHellTempest

@loled: Nice, never thought of the proxy set per tab but would be nice since I work in a mixed work environment. This would be awesome.

anewark

I'd like to see better support for focusing on work on a wide/large screen monitor. Specifically, customizable F11 behavior would be very helpful - allow me the option to either:

1) Keep window size same when invoking F11

or

2) Specify a maximum page width (for all web sites).

I have almost completely migrated from the desktop to the cloud over the past year. It is possible, though not at all straightforward or easy, to focus on one task alone with a big screen monitor. I often need to focus for more than a few minutes on one task, such as reading an article, writing an article, doing bookkeeping, etc. and I want to get rid of all distractions. F11 works fine for that on a 19" vertically aligned screen, but not so good on a large monitor.

TechDad

I'd still like to see them fix the lockups. Firefox always hangs for me, both at home and work, and the delays kill me. It sometimes takes 30 seconds for it to catch up to my typing.

I'm open to suggestions for remedying this problem.

skaorsk8

The downside is it will take another 0.4 longer for them to release.

julesdurbin

I don't mind the restart. I'd settle for no add-on window pop-up and no new tab for many extensions after restart.

I'm surprised they didn't focus on one process per tab for this. Hopefully that won't be as long coming as the no restart for extensions has been, which is a minor inconvenience but something that should have never really been there.

@Platypus Man: It might require a lot of work to do, but Microsoft managed to do it. It would help the stability a lot, I would really like to see them do it.

turwaith

I'd love to see a volume control if that's possible

@skaorsk8: It's your computer. I have 7+ computers laying around and none of them do that.

I'd like to see drag and drop or at least copy/cut functions from the download window. It annoys me that I have to navigate to the folder before I can interact with my downloads when they're already in a neat little window.

@jupiterthunder: I HATE having to restart FF to install extensions. I have 10-20 tabs open at all times restart = pain.

@loled: well, per site maybe.

@Platypus Man: Stability's not the only positive- try opening a PDF or similarly hefty page in Firefox- you'll notice that it locks up the browser for a second or two.

This simply doesn't happen in Chrome- you can happily open thirty enormous pages in tabs at once, and not have it chug at all. Doing the same would send Firefox into a fit. As far as features go, it's succeeded in firmly dragging me away from Firefox for good.

AirRaven

@TechDad: umm, F11 is fullscreen key...
when you disengage fullscreen by repeating the F11, it returns to previous size.
If you would like to set a size for the window, please drag the corner of the windows to the desired size and position to your liking. thank you for using a computer.

Man I love Firefox ! I've been using Safari for quite a while and just switched back to Firefox and it gets better with each new release !

@jupiterthunder: It's annoying, but the 3 second wait isn't so bad.

It's still annoying, though.

THEMES have had no-restart in Opera for years now. First time I used Opera was like 3-4 years ago and it already had.

@Falaris: one process per tab would be a pretty big overhaul on firefox, I doubt its coming anytime soon, look for FF4 or maybe even 5. It won't be a shoe-in feature. But what 3.5 does have is when it crashes it gives you the option to open the tabs that didn't cause the crash, so you don't lose all your tabs.

The only change I want to see is to speed up whatever the heck it is that makes Facebook so g-dm slow. I'm assuming it's the javascript rendering, but I haven't broken apart the code enough to know that for certain.

Better account management, password storing and verification of your personal credentials.

Don't simply remember my password, remember me!
Have setup create at minimum the default profile, with the option to add more. Then during setup, ask for OpenID credentials. If the user doesn't have one, create one based on their input. Make common blog, wiki and forum accounts registrable with a single button click that will import the data you save in your profile. Let it upload your avatar, fill in name, age etc. Show a preview of data being sent before hand and allow users to simply "uncheck" any data they don't want to send. Have it generate a secure and unique password for each site and e-mail you that info, but allow access through that browser via a user determined master-password.

When I post to a blog or forum, remember it. Put my recent posts from every site into an rss feed on my homepage so I can monitor responses without looking at twenty different sites or surrendering my e-mail address to anyone who might read it.

If I go to the same site multiple times a day, the browser should be aware of that and use prefetching to cache new images and no-expiration content for faster page loads.

Next, expand on portability. I should be able to log into firefox from any computer and have my bookmarks carry over, along with start page, search engine preferences etc. But that's just the beginning. They're toying around with "location awareness" already. So let the user define what location they're in. If I'm at work, let it default to "work mode", a profile with separate bookmarks, security restrictions etc. When I click an e-mail link, it should know to open the program or account for my professional e-mail address. When I go to "Home Mode", it should know to use my personal address.

Some would argue that this may be considered "bloat" and is better off as an extension than a core function. I could see that, however speed isn't just about memory usage (this may add 200-300Kb at most) and page load times (which would not really suffer with this suggestion). The real benchmark is how quickly you can actually do something with the browser, not it's theoretical limits. If you have to register at a new site every other day to post a comment... what's a few milliseconds compared to that constant ordeal often taking 2-3 minutes and then the endless e-mail verification and squinting at a captcha wondering if that's an "l" or a "/"?

The inequities with many common web services can be resolved on the browser end with a little effort, leading to a more intuitive way to interact with them and ultimately saving time.

@Naim Falandino: Me too! I wonder if an extension could do this?

Unfortunately I have no programming skills at all.

TheLouis

@Rolcol: +1

TheLouis

@JRod37: I run facebook on my home and work firefox and have had no speed issues. Your browser might be loading userscripts or extensions to work with facebook, or more likely, your internet service is tethering connection speed to facebook to reduce bandwidth use.

@JRod37: Does it have a fixed or large background? Try adblocking the image - some sites have drastic speedups from this.

@julesdurbin: Umm. No. 3.5 is the rebranded version number for the public release of what is currently the 3.1 beta. You will never see such specific speculation on future features that many versions ahead.

Nathan Coulombe

@portezbie: sndvol.exe under Vista can do that.

@RickS: That's a job for a tbird extension, really.

@AirRaven: FoXit reader seems good at not locking up. Adobe managed to bring my system to an absolute crawl - my system which boots in 28 seconds and loads FF in 2.

@mnerd: by which i mean tag.

mnerd

@vlatro: I don't know. I feel the blink tab was used rather appropriately in this case.

mnerd

@Falaris: It's a big effort - small gain feature. It sounds cool in theory, but I really haven't noticed substantial improvement in my browsing experience provided by that feature in Chrome.

Speed and hurry up with the release already... sigh...

@FunkyMonkey: While I agree with you, do you expect anyone to take your advice on what makes a browser good or bad after dusting off the old Blink tag?

I want Speeeed!

@skaorsk8: That's paging, caused by too low RAM. Try disabling as many background services and tasks as possible :)

Address concerns with "Show Password" "feature"

Cole Smith

@skaorsk8: Use Chrome.

Bats

@Cole Smith: It was funny at first, but sometimes it gets very inconvenient

orlo

@vlatro: I just discovered it about 30min ago. I had to try it out. :) Sorry people.

I need speed. Look at chrome. Firefox has lost its agility and speed of development. They have become what IE was like in IE6 days.

Don't get me wrong. I love FF. I don't mind FF taking more memory on my system as long as it can speeds up. Days of complaining high memory usage are gone with cheap memory.

FF needs one dedicated release for Performance Tuning.

Make Things FASTER !!

What the following extension provide: 1. Automatic save folder 2. Faviconize Tab (one of the best extensions around) 3. Lazarus: Form recovery 4. Organize search engines 5. Tagging for multiple bookmarks (essential!) I think they are all worthy of inclusion in Firefox proper.

HeddaArachne

Incognito-mode like Chrome would be awesome, then I can finally uninstall Chrome. :D

SumatiRaphman

@NotHellTempest: Weave will do this in the future (there is the checkbox in preferences, but not available for now)

MontgomeryKeppim

Yes...I'll second extension syncing. Would be nice to have all the computers I use have the same "version" of Firefox without having to go to a portable version.

ChaunceyEchion

@jupiterthunder:

Having to restart the browser every time you install something annoys the sh!t out of me.

BarbeQueQ

I want 64 bit FF. Everything else can wait

jbert

@Platypus Man: all the freakin time, it happens? With a wider focus on web-apps as desktop-apps, seperate processes will no longer be a luxury, they will be a NECESITY. The browser HAS to be as stable as possible. Drastic change or no, to not address this is idiocy.

YadonWaffles

No restart after extension installation: Hooray! Finally!
I hope this will come with the possiblity to autohide the annoying addon popup after you've succesfully installed an extension.

And as always: The performance issues, looking forward to faster startup and use fewer clogging and memory usage.

Margreet Tiwow

@Kool2bchilln: F11 does many things to help block out distraction, not just enlarge the window. It gets rid of tabs, toolbars, statusbar, menu, etc. - all of which is great. Expanding to full screen is fine on 19" monitor in portrait position, but on a 24" monitor, your text line stretches so wide that it becomes pretty hard to read and work with. I want to see text width of around 60-90 characters, not 100-150 characters.

I do use an experimental extension called "Hide All Toolbars" which almost does what I want - but not quite because it doesn't hide tabs or titlebar.

I've also been using bookmarklets like Readable and Readability. That's fine for reading, but doesn't help with other tasks.

TechDad

@Phoshi: Good advice, that's where I'd begin too.

Also consider:

1) Are you using the beta or running extensions in forced compatibility? Try disabling them one at a time and restarting to see if there's any impact.

2) Have you ever had a BSOD on those systems? If you've had one in the last 5-10 years, it's likely a bad memory chip. Those symptoms go hand in hand and usually point towards cheap OEM RAM. Firefox should never be that slow, and BSODs are obsolete unless something is seriously wrong with your setup. If it's only lockups, it's likely just the settings, but if you experience any other system issues, Faulty hardware is very common.

3) What is you're cache limit set to? If it's too high, it will actually suck up RAM (I know it's disk cache, don't ask me why, just an observation I've made on many systems), if it's too low page refreshes will be slow. Ideally you should have it set to 1/16 of your available RAM. So <1GB = 50MB Cache, 1GB = 64MB, 2GB = 128MB, 4GB = 256MB and so on.
Many users have it set wrong, making it too large thinking they'll speed up the browser, but actually they end up doing the opposite. Likewise, if too low the page load and refresh times suffer. If you're typing in an AJAX driven website that hasn't completely finished loading (look at the status bar and wait for "Done"), the typing will lag like you describe.

4) Your ISP may have a crappy DNS. Go to openDNS.org and follow their instructions. You could have a fast connection as far as bandwidth goes, but they simply can't resolve domain names as fast as their customers need. That leaves many sites stuck, visibly looking like they're loaded, but in the status bar you continue to see activity even after the images and text are done loading.

I actually Run Firefox 3 on an old 266Mhz 64MB PII (currently my music server). It runs fine with no slowdowns or lockups at all.

i just want it to start up under 10 seconds with no extensions, on my netbook

takemetoyourtoaster

@jbert: Agreed, though it's really low priority now. The advantages of 64bit for a web browser are minimal. Multi-threading on the other hand would help out quite a bit more. Of course, if they can do either one, it makes more sense to do both at the same time.

I'm not sure if this is an issue with FireFox or just my pc, but it seems like its taking longer and longer to launch FF for me. I'd rather not have to wait 2 mins when I want to open it. its probably an issue on my end, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

The feature I would LOVE to see it upload progress!!!
Anyone with me?

FYI though, it is FAST :D

ddthesm

I would like to be able to move whole segments of the Firefox UI from the top to the down or side portions of my screen. Not just tabs(like some scripts do), but menu bar and favourite bar too. This would make it easier to use the fox on a widescreen.

Also removing the status bar and integrating it's functions into other elements of the FF UI would be great (à la fission FF addon).

Finally, making FF completely transparent from top to down by default in Windows 7 and Vista. I've managed to achieve this already using a flurry of scripts (via Stylish extension). The result can be found under my name in the LH show and tell group on Flicker.com.

[ftp.mozilla.org]

Alpha-pre-release of 3.6, no guarantees though as it is an alpha pre-release (about as early as they come on test versions for the public.

ddthesm

@zmnatz: I want face gestures soo badly. It would mean an end to all my pesky one-handed internet sprees.

I think the one thing I really need is one process per tab.

I'd love to be able to skip the notices of all the extension updates at startup. I also have serious lockups and slowdowns in my desktop (I only use FF in my laptop).

GeorgeProtoss

@FunkyMonkey: I thought the blink was cool! :)

What about Windows 7 support? You know for the tabs popping up when you hover over the icon in the taskbar.

ethanthekiwi

Google Chrome actually supports drag drop upload. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this.

@Rolcol: My guess is it's going to be in FF 4.0.

I surely would like some speed. Even with absolutely no add-ons whatsoever zero zilch none nada, straight out of the box, clean, no bookmarks, no history: I cannot manage to get FF or Minefield to run as fast as Safari3/4 or Webkit or Opera or Camino on my MacOSX 10.5.6 system.

Camino runs danged near as close in speed to Webkit, Minefield third, then Opera (then Shiira then so-called Chrome)

@FoxyProxy with patterns. Set up the addresses each proxy should be used for and let it go.

You couldn't use multiple proxies for a single site (from different tabs) and there may be problems if you followed a link and wanted to stay behind the proxy.

pal_sch

@alexgieg: By that time they'll arbitrarily name it FF 10.0 to make it look like they're ahead of IE.

Angry Numismatist

@RickS: If 3.6 doesn't feature a "Hannah Montana" version I'm going to be very upset

Angry Numismatist

@[addons.mozilla.org]

adjohnson916

@Angry Numismatist:
I could see A firefox theme involving glitter and hannah pictures all over

atomic1fire

@adjohnson916:
Or Just called Private Browsing in 3.1 (the current beta)

atomic1fire

@TheLouis: this is an amazing idea you have there!

Smiling_Gandalf

@AirRaven: Hi. I was waiting for someone to say exactly this. Last night - how I wish I had screen capped it, but it didn't occur to me until right afterward - it got late and I got tired, so I right-clicked the Firefox tab I was on to close all tabs (the TMP add-on provides the context menu for that). The warning came up: "You are about to close 267 tabs." 267.

I at least had the presence of mind to check Task Manager at that point- you know what Firefox 3.0.8 was using? 235MB of RAM. For 267 tabs.

I had the browser open about three hours. I was watching videos, cruising this site, reading ValleyWag, AlleyInsider, TechMeme, TechCrunch, looking at a ton of stuff on archive.org (I'm into the 90's lately) and I didn't close a single tab as I proceeded from one page to the next, but I never knew I had that many tabs open.

I never suffered any performance hit in Firefox or on my computer - the "close tabs" warning was the only inkling I had of how far I had pushed the browser. And it did just fine. Excellent. I had 19 add-ons installed last night along with the Chromifox Basic theme and Firefox performed flawlessly under that load.

Now...what were you saying Chrome could do again?

emnem

@AirRaven: As to your PDFs-in-Firefox complaint (which I forgot to address because writing about last night makes me so awed at Firefox I can barely think straight) I have never had any PDF "chug" or whatever problem it is you speak of. I use Foxit to open PDFs and they open just like anything else does in Firefox - fast and smooth. For me, anyway.

/end fangirl

emnem

Hmm a seprate looking window for PB ( i looked at "gift ideas" without it on by accident. Mom saw...)

Witherslick

Other than what some other people have said *Tab process isolation*. Why don't we kick it up another notch and have extension isolation where each extension is isolated in its on process and you view memory/cpu/disk usuage of each extension so you can tell if any extensions are hoging resources.

You know, I still don't understand why I want to separate my "web apps" into individual "programs".

I feel that much more organised and efficient, keeping them all within tabs.

tali3sin

@loled: Per-tab processes would make me so happy...

wererogue

This one process per tab has to be done soon ... that's the thing that really rox my sox in chrome ... and I'd also love to have this ubiquity extension made native !

SudeepaPirate

@TheLouis: FoxyProxy can do url matching for determining proxies, but apparently can not do per-tab matching (This information is simply not passed to the layer where proxy stuff happens, apparently)

@veritascitor:

3.1 = 3.5 & 3.2 = 3.6. Why did they renumber anyway?

dbzlotrfan

mozilla.org has firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for download--it has private browsing

ReubenCockatrice

@amIthe1: its funny how IE8 already does that huh. As much as im a firefox fan, you have to give the competition its does sometime

Tyler Musgrave

how about integrating downthemall extension and displaying the downloads as a small window inside the main window like 'firebug' shows?

WillardEurynome

Aside from the usual (more speed!), I'd love to see Ubiquity functionality built in. Once it's fine-tuned, of course...

OprahHaemarrhoid

As an extension developer, I really hope "no restart" feature means I don't have to tweak my code...

ChandlerAntiphates

it would be nice to have a way to not crash the browser when 1 tab dies, without having one process per tab. Personally, that feature would annoy the heck out of me. Firstly, if i want to manually close firefox in the task manager, then i have to go through 23 processes. Also, the processes arent named the same name as my tabs, so closing a specific tab in the process manager would suck too (like having a bunch of IE 6 windows open...and guessing at which ones which). Then finally, having 23 seperate processes dedicated to one program, in itself would be annoying as hell in the first place.

Any functional beta with these features available yet?

twii

@vlatro: You know you can disable the blink feature globally in firefox, right?

Just go here:[lifehacker.com] and hey presto, problem solved!

TheLostVikings

@Swizzler121: If you have the "Session Manager" extension installed you can do that right now, it will even let you select which tabs to restore, or not.

It's one of those essential extensions that I always add after a fresh install.

TheLostVikings

@Victor V.: Themes have no-restart for Firefox with Personas.

Domthedude001

It'd be nice if v3.6 could run downstairs and get me a cold Dr. Pepper every hour or so.

@Swizzler121: Amen to that. I hate that right now.

Corwin Xtreme Lawrence

@dbzlotrfan: They renumbered because it is a complete overhaul of the Javascript engine. That sort of work doesn't fit in with that small of an upgrade. Usually FF goes from say 2.6 to 2.7 when they add a few small extra features, just slightly larger than their updates from say 2.6.4 to 2.6.5 which are usually made for security reasons.

Since they are putting so much time into it and redesigning such a large part they decided that the version number should reflect that change.

Corwin Xtreme Lawrence

I would like to see Font Rendering Like Safari as well as No OS integration like Safari 3

TuesdayCassowary

I know some of this is probably up to Adobe, but currently Flash runs very poorly in Firefox on my Intel MacBook with 2GB of ram and Tiger. It stutters frequently and fullscreen videos fail to respond to mouse movement or hovering (ie., youtube's volume dial). Here's the bug report for the later problem, which has had no response from the developer thus far: [bugzilla.mozilla.org]

Viewer