Firefox 4.0 alpha 2 brings out-of-process plug-ins

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Jos

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Mozilla is looking to crash-proof future versions of its Firefox browser by developing a new feature called Electrolysis that will compartmentalize processes on a tab-by-tab basis -- similar to Google Chrome. But that's not the only angle they are taking. Also like Chrome the just-released Firefox 3.7 alpha 2 (which will actually be released as 4.0) has added out-of-process plug-in support, allowing Flash and the like to run in a separate memory compartment so that the browser can gracefully handle any crashes instead of going under itself.

The new Firefox preview also incorporates a number of JavaScript and HTML5 performance improvements, adds support for the WebGL standard and Content Security Policy, partial support of CSS transitions and several other features intended for developers.

Those interested in giving the new features a go and reporting back to Mozilla can use the links below to download. Mac support for out-of-process plug-ins is not available yet, however. Keep in mind that this is a very early preview intended for developers only and should not be used as your primary browser.

Download: Windows | Mac OS X | Linux

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This is a much needed feature and something that I have noticed works very well in Chrome. And now if Microsoft would implement this on IE7 it would be nice. Here at work today, where I only have access to IE 7, I have had my browser section lock up twice today because of a combination of flash on one page and the company webfilter screwing up the scripts for that site. If this feature were availble I would have only lost that tab and not my full browsing session.
 
@klpowell:
If I'm not mistaken, I believe IE8 has the ability to run separate processes similar to Chrome. You should look into having your work update its browser.

I'm not much for alpha/beta testing when it comes to browsers, but these features seem nice. I have been waiting for Firefox to implement the separate process feature because it has worked so well in Chrome.

Any word on how this is supposed to compare to the new Opera speed-wise?
 
I'm just hoping the revision in the code of Firefox will help alleviate some of their slowdowns in recent versions. It's sad when the relative newcomer Chrome beats the pants off my old favorite Firefox when it comes to loading and executing speeds... Guess even Mozilla can become victims of bloat at times! :)
 
These are definitely needed to keep Firefox user-friendly. I regularly install Firefox as a secondary browser for my users. They can often get agitated with me when firefox crashes. If crashes can be isolated to individual tabs, that would be great. Looking forward to the updates.
 
the current version i'm using (3.6) often gives me problems on shockwave plugin on linux system, and when it does, the whole browser crashes. hope this new version will solve this problem
 
Adobe

Sounds like a good feature, so now Adobe will only crash the tab. Maybe someday Adobe will make great software that will be slim, fast and just work...

Ah sorry, I was dreaming there for a moment.
 
What are all these crashes? Are these installations strung together by toothpicks? My browserS NEVER crash, and I do a lot of surfing. Only my mac browsers would crash, and I got rid of the mac. Perhaps you should stick to browsing Techspot only.
 
If you have a lot of crashes, perhaps you should stick to Toshiba computers or Asus motherboards like I have. I've got xp, vista, and linux. NO CRASHES.
 
What are all these crashes? Are these installations strung together by toothpicks? My browserS NEVER crash, and I do a lot of surfing. Only my mac browsers would crash, and I got rid of the mac. Perhaps you should stick to browsing Techspot only.
 
It's great to see they are trying to keep up the pace with their rivals!
IE8 already has a tab per process feature, so does Chrome.
 
@klpowell U should get on to IT services @ ur Workplace and tell them u want to use Firefox or the like. IT services at my college have agreed to Install Firefox on every PC! (they not done it yet :/) Anyway, I never have Firefox crash, have mnay plugins and have 20+ tabs open sometimes, 0 crashes. When I tried Chrome It crashed all the time, SO I switched back. The stable Browser just got even more Stable! Good Job Mozilla.
 
I'll wait until beta hits. I always use firefox's beta releases. They are pretty stable and I get the shiny features earlier. And on a sorta unrelated note. I tested out opera for a few days after the techspot news. And I see absolutely no improvement in real time use. You tube crashed on me actually.
 
With IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera "copying" each other's innovations, it won't be long before they'll all be the same browser. :p
 
Much needed feature, Would wait for the final release as always and I hope this works out well for Firefox's huge library of add-ons :)
 
"crash proof" doesn't exist. I'll be interested to see what they do with this. I actually had FF 3.6 crash repeatedly the other day, the first time I've had that happen since FF 3 came out.

But, even though I'm interested in the update, does anyone else think the speed at which some of these releases are coming out at makes "keeping up-to-date" difficult to say the least? As an IT professional each of these releases means an update I must run on over a dozen computers at the office plus my 3 at home.
 
Firefox is great but i'm really starting to fall in love with Safari. It renders pages very quickly.
 
FF has been and always will be my favorite browser but chrome is starting to grow on me i like them both a lot and ff 3.6 is the sh?? ya know :) but this is a very nice update to ff.
 
I tried switching to Chrome a few weeks ago.
Then I found out that running 3 tabs in Chrome took up ~200MB of ram on my machine. And was lagging while doing that.
Firefox runs at about ~250 with 5+ tabs and pretty smoothly. I am running 50+ tabs now at 350MB and after the initial loading, it's perfectly fine!
So I switched back to Firefox, and I'll stay there.

My point is, I don't want this 'each tab to be a separate process' thing in Firefox if it'll cause the lag I experienced in Chrome.
 
I'm not sure if it's a concurrent problem but in my old desktop chrome takes quite a lot of resources (what can you expect with 1gb of ram?) so firefox is a must use in my case, which brings me to this issue, the new features sound good upgraded but I hope that won't consume a lot of sources like chrome does.
 
I wouldn't like Firefox incorporating Chromes tab feature to some degree. Due to the fact that chromes tab feature is a memory hog. On the other-hand, I like the sound of the crash-proof feature.
 
Lets hope FireFox 4 is better than 3.6.
FF 3.6 is too slow.I am currently using the Flock browser, which is a modified version of FF 3.0.
Almost all the latest FF add-ons work with Flock
 
I don't remember when FF crashed or froze on any of my computers, or IE for that matter; its that long !! :)

Having said that, I believe there is very strong need for improvements in the area of performance, its good already but it can be much better IMHO. Although I have no issues in this respect as well, probably because mostly I have Flash content turned off, so usually pages render much quickly

Secondly, if they can somehow find ways to further reduce memory footprint of the FF it will be fantastic for most users.

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