Previously I was running something around:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3
I did update a couple of times since then, and I think i was running a beta 3.5.4 or so. Well, I just updated* and now I have:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2b5) Gecko/20100106 Unity/1.9.2-0.b5.1 (2010) Firefox/3.6b5
Spoiler
Run
smart --gui, then go to Edit > Channels and add the test channel. Also, I’m using Unity Linux 64bit, but it should be available for 32bit as well. Btw, wherever possible, 32 and 64bit software will both be available thanks to some smart build tools.The difference in speed is remarkable. Well, obviously.. since I just made the remark. What a stupid phrase.
Previously, when I load up a bunch of tabs I have to sit on my hands and wait for Firefox to load everything before it returned reasonable control to me. It’s always been an annoyance of mine to have software not properly designed to do “magic” multitasking. This is when a program gives as much processing power as possible to the most interesting / foreground task which a user is interacting with, and all the other stuff is done behind the scenes. So if I load up 10,000 tabs, Firefox shouldn’t choke. Instead it should load the tab I’m currently looking at and then get around to the rest of the tabs when it has some idle cycles to work with.
Well.. it looks like this has been achieved. Finally. Well done. I’m sure it’s no small feat either. Previously, a web browser was a single window which would show a single web page. The whole “tabbed browsing” concept is something that may seem second nature to most, but there was a time when you’d have to use an about:config trick in a beta (alpha?) version of Firefox to get tabbed browsing working. From what I remember, the developers were pretty gun shy about the whole affair.. as though they weren’t too keen on the general public rushing out to try a beta just for this feature. It really caught on quick, and it made it into a more stable release really quickly.
Well, I would attribute some of the speed improvements to Mozilla’s TraceMonkey. But I’m doing the same old stuff from before, and none of it was relying on JavaScript. So there must be some additional code changes.
Now I maintain that this isn’t actually an improvement like most people would think. I maintain that the Mozilla team is simply de-tangling the horror that is the Firefox code. They’re desperately swimming .. trying to keep their head above the water at the same time as they’re trying to build a boat. This JavaScript stuff is their way of cutting off a ball and chain while hopping up on a floating plank.
That analogy wasn’t all that bad was it? … Fine, screw you then.
Now
I’ve bitched a lot about Firefox, and most of that bitching is due to speed (and memory) issues. That and Flash. I hate Flash. I hates it.
Firefox is .. well it’s really happy now! I never thought I’d be able to get back to Slackware-like speeds while keeping all this fancy new software and it’s wonderful/horrible complexity. But.. things are looking up.
Also, my previous issue with metacafe videos seems to have been resolved. It turns out to be a Firefox issue and not a Flash issue. Go figure.
But all Addons have been broken of course. I force them all (using the Nightly Tester Tools addon) and so far I’ve found only one misbehaving addon: All-in-One Sidebar (AiOS)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1027
http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/
.. it completely breaks Firefox and must be disabled.
Oh, and on a final note.. I just bumped into hendrix.mozilla.org, a feedback system.
So far no issues.. although while editing this post (with WordPress’ online JavaScript-enhanced editor) I see part of my post is duplicated below in the editor. It’s purely a visual glitch, and I don’t see the text while in HTML view.
