November 11, 2024

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Firefox 4 Review

Firefox 4 is finally out and after the long beta process it has reached golden master status. With over 80 million downloads it is for sure a success. They have implemented a lot of new features that the other browsers were already using like tabs on top, but it is Firefox so you can rely on it being stable.

Features

App Tab

To activate “app tab” you right click on an open tab and click pin tab. It pins a mini tab that dynamically updates with a soft glow if you got a message on some services like Gmail or Twitter.

Tabs on Top

Tabs on top is nothing new but it is new to Firefox. They reduce clutter and are easier to manage. You can still have the tabs on the bottom if you want you just have to edit it it the preferences menu.

Customization

You can now completely customize Firefox. Any of the menu elements can be dragged and dropped to where you want them. This allows you to change Firefox to meet your needs.

html5 Support

Firefox version 4 has a 100 point increase on the html5 test from its predecessor Firefox 3.5. This is good but is still lacking compared to the other webkit browsers. Google Chrome stable scored 288. You can compare these tests yourself if you want at html5test.com.

CSS3 Support

Firefox has substantially updated their CSS3 support with support for: CSS Transitions, -moz-calc(), -moz-any(), -moz-element(), -moz-placeholder(), Border Radius, box-shadow, -moz-font-feature-settings, device-pixel-ratio, -moz-tab-size, -moz-focusring, -moz-image-rect, Resizable Text Areas, and they added support for a whole slew of modern API’s.

Speed

Firefox has updated its gecko rendering engine but it is still not as fast as webkit. Here is the scores from the SunSpider 0.9.1 Javascript Test:

Firefox

RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
Total: 306.3ms +/- 1.1%

3d: 50.6ms +/- 1.9% cube: 20.4ms +/- 1.8% morph: 9.1ms +/- 2.5% raytrace: 21.1ms +/- 4.6%

access: 47.7ms +/- 1.4% binary-trees: 5.7ms +/- 8.5% fannkuch: 23.1ms +/- 1.0% nbody: 7.9ms +/- 2.9% nsieve: 11.0ms +/- 0.0%

bitops: 20.7ms +/- 2.8% 3bit-bits-in-byte: 0.9ms +/- 25.1% bits-in-byte: 11.0ms +/- 0.0% bitwise-and: 2.3ms +/- 15.0% nsieve-bits: 6.5ms +/- 5.8%

controlflow: 3.4ms +/- 10.9% recursive: 3.4ms +/- 10.9%

crypto: 23.0ms +/- 2.9% aes: 12.4ms +/- 4.0% md5: 6.4ms +/- 5.8% sha1: 4.2ms +/- 7.2%

date: 38.0ms +/- 2.2% format-tofte: 25.4ms +/- 2.4% format-xparb: 12.6ms +/- 4.0%

math: 29.3ms +/- 5.1% cordic: 7.0ms +/- 0.0% partial-sums: 13.9ms +/- 7.8% spectral-norm: 8.4ms +/- 5.9%

regexp: 16.6ms +/- 2.2% dna: 16.6ms +/- 2.2%

string: 77.0ms +/- 1.3% base64: 5.2ms +/- 5.8% fasta: 15.7ms +/- 2.2% tagcloud: 22.1ms +/- 2.4% unpack-code: 26.0ms +/- 1.8% validate-input: 8.0ms +/- 4.2%

Google Chrome

RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
Total: 323.8ms +/- 2.2%

3d: 49.9ms +/- 7.1% cube: 18.1ms +/- 19.0% morph: 13.8ms +/- 10.0% raytrace: 18.0ms +/- 9.0%

access: 35.7ms +/- 11.8% binary-trees: 2.5ms +/- 15.1% fannkuch: 18.0ms +/- 22.3% nbody: 10.3ms +/- 7.4% nsieve: 4.9ms +/- 27.0%

bitops: 28.8ms +/- 4.2% 3bit-bits-in-byte: 3.2ms +/- 29.4% bits-in-byte: 6.9ms +/- 7.6% bitwise-and: 10.4ms +/- 4.8% nsieve-bits: 8.3ms +/- 4.2%

controlflow: 4.4ms +/- 8.4% recursive: 4.4ms +/- 8.4%

crypto: 31.3ms +/- 4.4% aes: 10.7ms +/- 3.2% md5: 11.3ms +/- 3.1% sha1: 9.3ms +/- 16.6%

date: 28.9ms +/- 3.6% format-tofte: 13.7ms +/- 3.5% format-xparb: 15.2ms +/- 7.6%

math: 28.4ms +/- 9.4% cordic: 5.0ms +/- 32.3% partial-sums: 16.5ms +/- 9.2% spectral-norm: 6.9ms +/- 15.8%

regexp: 12.7ms +/- 3.8% dna: 12.7ms +/- 3.8%

string: 103.7ms +/- 1.5% base64: 6.6ms +/- 5.6% fasta: 15.8ms +/- 2.9% tagcloud: 27.4ms +/- 1.3% unpack-code: 37.0ms +/- 1.3% validate-input: 16.9ms +/- 6.4%

Pros: Good customization built in Stable Borrowed good features from other browsers Cons: Slower than other browsers Slow support of html5 and CSS3 Still uses Gecko Rendering Engine SCORE: 6/10