Mozilla continues with the rapid development of Firefox and shortly after it launched Firefox 6.0 the first public beta of Firefox 7.0 has arrived. This time it has focused on the memory usage where it has cut times at loading websites and the amount of RAM used by the browser.
Firefox 7.0 Beta was rolled out on Mozilla’s servers just recently and beside the fullscale version for Windows, Mac and Linux it has also updated its Firefox Beta for Android. Mozilla has also optimized the use of memory in Firefox 7.0 beta, while it has also improved the handling of used memory. The browser will primarily be better at releasing memory when working with many tabs at the same time.
Firefox 5.0 with two workdays of tabs (~50) consumes a lot of RAM
How much of a difference it makes we don’t know yet, we are about to test it. Other news include faster synchronization of bookmarks and passwords, and support for Azure Direct2D for Canvas animation.
Also Firefox Beta for Android have optimized memory handling and faster Firefox synchronization, but also the possibility to resume the browser from previous sessions and tabs.
A complete list of the news in Firefox 7.0 Beta and Firefox Beta for Android are below;
New in Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux:
- 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
New in Firefox Beta for Android:
- Optimized Memory Use: Reduces memory use and improves performance areas including responsiveness, startup and page load time, even in complex websites and Web apps
- Enhanced Firefox Sync: Your data syncs faster when a bookmark or password is added or changed
- Copy and paste: Copy and paste selected text from mobile websites
- Restored session history and tabs: Firefox restores browsing history and tabs so users can easily return to their previous browsing session
- Language selection: Firefox can detect the language setting on your Android device or allow you to select from more than 10 languages during initial set up
