Chicago (IL) – Mozilla released the first beta of the first major update for Firefox 3. The new software comes with the new Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, new end-user features such as previews for tabs and support for a handful of new web technologies. Unfortunately, the feature that users have been waiting for, the TraceMonkey JavaScript accelerator, is turned off by default. But you can turn it on and get what we believe is the fastest Firefox browser yet.

Most major browsers in development right now have a strong focus on speed. Chrome set the benchmark a few weeks ago; Mozilla and Apple will be following up with new browsers – Firefox 3.1 and Safari 4.0 – that promise dramatic speed gains. Microsoft claims that its Internet Explorer 8.0 will also be faster than 7.0, but the current beta 8 is clearly outmatched by its rivals at this time.

Mozilla’s speed gains in Firefox 3.1 are based on two factors: The new rendering engine Gecko 1.9.1 as well as the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Surprisingly, while TraceMonkey is integrated in Firefox 3.1, it is not active in the just released Firefox 3.1 beta 1. However, users can turn on the feature by following a few steps:

The feature that users were all talking about before the release was TraceMonkey, this boosts rendering speeds up to 40 times faster than the previous version of Firefox. This feature has been switched off, you can enable it:

1. Type about:config in the URL bar
2. Type javascript.options.jit.content in the Filter field
3. Double-click on the entry to set the value to true
4. Close the browser window and restart the browser

According to Mozilla, TraceMonkey should deliver speed gains of up to 40x compared to previous version of Firefox. Depending on the website, we instantly noticed speed gains as some websites that showed some delay previously now load notably faster. Subjectively, the new Firefox plays in the same league as Google Chrome in most webpages we visited this morning. However, this subjective impression of a much faster browser is not mirrored by Google’s V8 benchmark test, which delivered a score of 74 for Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 and a score of 2006 for Google Chrome 0.2.            

Besides the speed enhancement, Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 adds support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3, a URL bar that supports a range of special characters and a tab preview feature that can be used by pressing CTRL+TAB.
Also new is integrated support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

You can download Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 free of charge here.

Wow - nice and fast

Oct 15, 2008 11:46     

I just d/l'd 3.1 b1 and turned on TraceMonkey. WAY faster... excellent. I can't wait for them to roll out the final version. Chrome really doesn't bring much to the table at this point.
KP report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Separate processes

Oct 15, 2008 11:53     

Is each tab its own process yet?
Findarato report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Firefox's SVG closing in on Opera :-)

Oct 15, 2008 15:22     

Great to see it happening. More SVG via http://svg.startpagina.nl
stelt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Did they fix the bugs yet? No...

Oct 15, 2008 16:57     

Look on offense to the Mozilla guys, but if they want to impress us then fix the damn bugs first. Speed doesn't matter when FF regularly crashes, locks up, or completely fails to load content. Furthermore support for FF on the Mozilla site would be nice. Assuming you get a response from a Mozilla support person (which I've yet to do, regardless of the setup and crash detail I provide), you're met with "go through the entire troubleshooting guide". After doing that the response is "we're not seeing that issue here", end of story - if it can't be replicated no one of their few test machines you're SOL. I encourage anyone with a problem running FF to check out the Mozilla support site. It's an eye opener how many problems exist for users and how little is being done to help them.

hank report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -7

@Hank

Oct 15, 2008 20:09     

1. It's a beta release... by definition it WILL have allot of bugs. That's why they don't push it as the main release... 2. So let me get this straight, while going for a great open source project, in which you pay zilch to the developers, your mad that you have to find solutions for some problems yourself? I personally find open source wikis and forums much more effective than calling some proprietary software's 50$/month help line (if I recall correctly that's what Microsoft wanted to charge me when my Vista box was Blue screen out of the box). Oh and BTW, I fixed my Vista computer with the help of... open forums about the problem...

Mathieu report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

@Mathieu, FF *3.0* NOT still in beta

Oct 15, 2008 23:35     

Mathieu, Fyi FF *3.0* is NOT still in beta. Regarding #2: all browsers are free, regardless of this I expect some level of bug free use from the software I use. Also the browser being free is misleading as Mozilla is clearly running a business off of the software, which means they are in *some* way benefiting from the use and from FF's marketshare. The real point being if they want to *keep* benefiting they'll need to do a better job on their releases and support or people will go elsewhere. Regarding the wikis: I pose this question to you; with FF's current marketshare do you *really* believe only techies are using it? (No, average people are using it too) Then do you *really* think someone's parents or tech-illiterate neighbors could solve their own FF problem using a few wikis (or even find the wikis)? (unlikely) Then clearly solid releases and support are critical to FF and Mozilla, especially when you consider that reliability and security is what they built the FF brand on.

hank report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0