Mozilla releases Firefox 4 Beta 12

[Emil]

Mozilla has released Firefox 4 Beta 12. The new beta build comes less than three weeks after the Beta 11 release, and as far as we can see this is mainly just a bug fix release. The company says this release delivers improved performance and responsiveness when watching videos on websites. For more information, check out the release notes.

If you're already running a previous beta of Firefox 4 you should see an automatic update soon. Alternatively, you can download Beta 12 directly for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux 32-bit/64-bit. The beta supports 77 languages.

Mozilla was originally planning on having Firefox 4 out by the end of last year, but it has had to delay the release multiple times. The company has fixed more than 7,000 bugs since the first beta release. The RC is next, followed by a final release.

Mozilla has been struggling to get Firefox 4.0 out the door. As a result, the company has announced that in 2011, not only will we see Firefox 4.0, but we will also see Firefox 5.0, Firefox 6.0, and Firefox 7.0.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/42579-mozilla-releases-firefox-4-beta-12.html

 

[FarGuddu]

Will it ever get a final release? What's wrong with Mozilla? What's taking them so long?

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

 

[Darkshadoe]

FarGuddu said:

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

Its ok..don't worry. The porn will still be there if whether or not you browser is fast or slow : )

 

[tacobfm]

FarGuddu said:
On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

How is mozilla slower than IE? And I think Mozilla a little better on macs than chrome does, however chrome does have better RAM management.

 

[Route44]

After being on the dark side for years I just installed Firefox 3.5 on my system and I immediately noticed it loads quicker than IE ever did.

As for the new Firefox beta I'll hold off until it moves away from that designation.

 

[Emil]

tacobfm said:

FarGuddu said:
On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

How is mozilla slower than IE? And I think Mozilla a little better on macs than chrome does, however chrome does have better RAM management.

I think he means IE9.

 

[gwailo247]

I think that they're all in cahoots, MS, Google and Mozilla. They're all simultaneously releasing versions every week, and each version is either faster or slower than the prior. On any given week one of the three is the fastest. We need some kind of bar graph.

 

[Sarcasm]

FarGuddu said:
Will it ever get a final release? What's wrong with Mozilla? What's taking them so long?

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

Slowest in what exactly? I'm confused. I have Firefox 4 and it loads everything instantaneously. GPU acceleration is great. Serious question.

 

[princeton]

sarcasm said:

FarGuddu said:
Will it ever get a final release? What's wrong with Mozilla? What's taking them so long?

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

Slowest in what exactly? I'm confused. I have Firefox 4 and it loads everything instantaneously. GPU acceleration is great. Serious question.

So you're saying chrome goes faster then instant? Benchmarks have shown chrome is faster, so maybe you should elaborate.

 

[Sarcasm]

Princeton said:

sarcasm said:

FarGuddu said:
Will it ever get a final release? What's wrong with Mozilla? What's taking them so long?

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

Slowest in what exactly? I'm confused. I have Firefox 4 and it loads everything instantaneously. GPU acceleration is great. Serious question.

So you're saying chrome goes faster then instant? Benchmarks have shown chrome is faster, so maybe you should elaborate.

Where are these benchmarks? I was asking what is it slow in or what makes chrome faster or whatever. I don't really care about what browser I use, everything loads fast enough for me to the point where I could care less if another version loads .00002 seconds faster.

IMO it boils down to other features like add-ons and overall user experience. Some people may like Firefox's interface and others may not. All these "OMG my browser is faster than yours" is just pointless e-peen banter.

 

[princeton]

sarcasm said:

Princeton said:

sarcasm said:

FarGuddu said:
Will it ever get a final release? What's wrong with Mozilla? What's taking them so long?

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

Slowest in what exactly? I'm confused. I have Firefox 4 and it loads everything instantaneously. GPU acceleration is great. Serious question.

So you're saying chrome goes faster then instant? Benchmarks have shown chrome is faster, so maybe you should elaborate.

Where are these benchmarks? I was asking what is it slow in or what makes chrome faster or whatever. I don't really care about what browser I use, everything loads fast enough for me to the point where I could care less if another version loads .00002 seconds faster.

IMO it boils down to other features like add-ons and overall user experience. Some people may like Firefox's interface and others may not. All these "OMG my browser is faster than yours" is just pointless e-peen banter.

The difference is actually quite noticeable. Perhaps you haven't even tried chrome?

 

[lawfer]

Princeton said:

sarcasm said:

Princeton said:

sarcasm said:

FarGuddu said:
Will it ever get a final release? What's wrong with Mozilla? What's taking them so long?

On the performance side, it still remains to be the slowest. I have now given up any hope of it achieving the same performance level like Chrome.

Slowest in what exactly? I'm confused. I have Firefox 4 and it loads everything instantaneously. GPU acceleration is great. Serious question.

So you're saying chrome goes faster then instant? Benchmarks have shown chrome is faster, so maybe you should elaborate.

Where are these benchmarks? I was asking what is it slow in or what makes chrome faster or whatever. I don't really care about what browser I use, everything loads fast enough for me to the point where I could care less if another version loads .00002 seconds faster.

IMO it boils down to other features like add-ons and overall user experience. Some people may like Firefox's interface and others may not. All these "OMG my browser is faster than yours" is just pointless e-peen banter.

The difference is actually quite noticeable. Perhaps you haven't even tried chrome?

No it is not. Not with this latest Firefox beta.

Also, benchmarks mean little to nothing in the real world.

 

[spikester48661]

I got firefox beta 12,IE9 and chrome 10 on my pc.All are good in one or two ways and are all fast.But chrome is the one I good.

 

[princeton]

lawfer said:
Also, benchmarks mean little to nothing in the real world.

Following that logic you could argue every Techspot cpu and gpu review means nothing. You are aware that there's a difference between real world and synthetic benchmarks right?

Why did I ask that? Your comment clearly shows you aren't aware of that.

 

[matrix86]

My benchmarks have shown Chrome to be faster, but in real world usage, I've noticed VERY little difference in speed between Chrome and Firefox. Now I will say that beta 9 was very fast, but 10 and up seemed to slow down a little. I gave up on the betas after 9 when they had a lot of missing features that they for some reason temporarily took out. Just gonna wait till 2012 when Firefox 4 finally comes out of beta

 

[lawfer]

Princeton said:

lawfer said:
Also, benchmarks mean little to nothing in the real world.

Following that logic you could argue every Techspot cpu and gpu review means nothing. You are aware that there's a difference between real world and synthetic benchmarks right?

Why did I ask that? Your comment clearly shows you aren't aware of that.

Ah, my friend, that was a quite stupid analogy, but I commend you for trying to prove whatever it was you were trying to prove. My comment was specifically talking about browser benchmarks, since that's the subject in discussion. You would have noticed this had you read I was responding to the person you quoted (who mentioned benchmarks). Browser benchmarks and GPU/CPU benchmarks are inherently different, as GPU/CPU benchmarks have much more less impacting variables than in a browser benchmark.

Browser benchmarks are useful to a certain extent --that I never denied-- but in reality real-world use is the most crucial. What I implied with this is, just like to one person a browser might be faster, to another might be just the opposite; which would explain why to you Chrome's speed is superior, and to me Firefox's speed is superior, rendering whatever a benchmark might have stated useless.

 

[hitech0101]

I have used firefox,IE 9,chrome,opera didn't notice any difference in performance so i choose firefox because i have been using it for years & it has a classic view by default offering all its options on top of the screen unlike IE9 or chrome.

 

[Chazz]

I haven't used firefox 3.6 in a long time. I've been on the beta version since it's release. I don't know why everyone is so obsessed with speed in browsers I've tried them all and theres little to no noticable difference for me.

Once I typed in "techspot.com" and it loaded so quick that I manual hit refresh because I thought it failed to actually launch the site. I figured I was in offline mode or something. This was quite surprising to me, I don't understand how you can need something faster than that.

The only thing that I can say for sure is that on my old PC chrome launched insanely faster than firefox and thats about it. I had to go back to firefox though because chrome used a lot of my limited memory when I had a ton of tabs open. This was quite a while, I'm unsure if chrome still has this issue or if firefox 4 will also have this issue since it runs plugins as a seperate process. Other than start up times, I've noticed nothing better or worse speed wise between chrome, firefox or opera.

 

[princeton]

lawfer said:

Princeton said:

lawfer said:
Also, benchmarks mean little to nothing in the real world.

Following that logic you could argue every Techspot cpu and gpu review means nothing. You are aware that there's a difference between real world and synthetic benchmarks right?

Why did I ask that? Your comment clearly shows you aren't aware of that.

Ah, my friend, that was a quite stupid analogy, but I commend you for trying to prove whatever it was you were trying to prove. My comment was specifically talking about browser benchmarks, since that's the subject in discussion. You would have noticed this had you read I was responding to the person you quoted (who mentioned benchmarks). Browser benchmarks and GPU/CPU benchmarks are inherently different, as GPU/CPU benchmarks have much more less impacting variables than in a browser benchmark.

Browser benchmarks are useful to a certain extent --that I never denied-- but in reality real-world use is the most crucial. What I implied with this is, just like to one person a browser might be faster, to another might be just the opposite; which would explain why to you Chrome's speed is superior, and to me Firefox's speed is superior, rendering whatever a benchmark might have stated useless.

And yet you still show you are unaware that doing a real world browser benchmark isn't impossible. 100 milliseconds faster is still a faster browser.

And then you go on about how firefox may be faster to some people and chrome might be faster to others. Pick out 10 constantly used sites by people on the web and chrome will load them faster, it may not even be noticeable but it's there. So overall chrome is faster. I love how you act as though a speed increase only matters when YOU can notice it.

Again, your logic is so bad that you could use it to argue that a sample survey is useless. Do you really expect someone to test every website ever made? You test certain ones that are more likely to be visited daily such as facebook or wikipedia and you base your results from there. Don't call my analogy stupid when your argument is utter nonsense.

 

[FarGuddu]

It's not really surprising to see so many Firefox fans here trying their level best to defend a dying browser. It's losing its appeal, and market share consistently to Chrome - and that too, for a reason!

Performance wise, yes, it's the slowest. I have tested them all(IE9 RC, Chrome 11 beta, Opera 11, Firefox 4 b12). Firefox remains to be the slowest - be it benchmarks, or real world testing. It feels sluggish to me, at least. Facebook is one site where it feels really slow.

Imo, Chrome is the best option right now. But, IE9 is also very fast and so is Opera. Firefox is really struggling here.

 

[princeton]

FarGuddu said:
It's not really surprising to see so many Firefox fans here trying their level best to defend a dying browser. It's losing its appeal, and market share consistently to Chrome - and that too, for a reason!

Performance wise, yes, it's the slowest. I have tested them all(IE9 RC, Chrome 11 beta, Opera 11, Firefox 4 b12). Firefox remains to be the slowest - be it benchmarks, or real world testing. It feels sluggish to me, at least. Facebook is one site where it feels really slow.

Imo, Chrome is the best option right now. But, IE9 is also very fast and so is Opera. Firefox is really struggling here.

A non firefox fanboy here? I thought I was the only one left alive. Good to see you mate.

 

[FarGuddu]

Princeton said:

FarGuddu said:
It's not really surprising to see so many Firefox fans here trying their level best to defend a dying browser. It's losing its appeal, and market share consistently to Chrome - and that too, for a reason!

Performance wise, yes, it's the slowest. I have tested them all(IE9 RC, Chrome 11 beta, Opera 11, Firefox 4 b12). Firefox remains to be the slowest - be it benchmarks, or real world testing. It feels sluggish to me, at least. Facebook is one site where it feels really slow.

Imo, Chrome is the best option right now. But, IE9 is also very fast and so is Opera. Firefox is really struggling here.

A non firefox fanboy here? I thought I was the only one left alive. Good to see you mate.

I loved Firefox in the past and still do. It's a good browser. But, competition wise, it's going down day by day. Even version 4 is a big flop to me in terms of speed. No wonder why, the company is already planning to release next versions 5, 6, 7 this year.

 

[Chazz]

Princeton said:
A non firefox fanboy here? I thought I was the only one left alive. Good to see you mate.

IMO, the sad thing is, until Chrome came out I didn't think it was possible to be a fanboy of a browser. To me it's a tool, and until one of these screw drivers come up with the idea to magnetize their tip so I'm not fiddling with screws they'll all remain the same.

 

[lawfer]

Princeton said:

lawfer said:

Princeton said:

lawfer said:
Also, benchmarks mean little to nothing in the real world.

Following that logic you could argue every Techspot cpu and gpu review means nothing. You are aware that there's a difference between real world and synthetic benchmarks right?

Why did I ask that? Your comment clearly shows you aren't aware of that.

Ah, my friend, that was a quite stupid analogy, but I commend you for trying to prove whatever it was you were trying to prove. My comment was specifically talking about browser benchmarks, since that's the subject in discussion. You would have noticed this had you read I was responding to the person you quoted (who mentioned benchmarks). Browser benchmarks and GPU/CPU benchmarks are inherently different, as GPU/CPU benchmarks have much more less impacting variables than in a browser benchmark.

Browser benchmarks are useful to a certain extent --that I never denied-- but in reality real-world use is the most crucial. What I implied with this is, just like to one person a browser might be faster, to another might be just the opposite; which would explain why to you Chrome's speed is superior, and to me Firefox's speed is superior, rendering whatever a benchmark might have stated useless.

And yet you still show you are unaware that doing a real world browser benchmark isn't impossible. 100 milliseconds faster is still a faster browser.

And then you go on about how firefox may be faster to some people and chrome might be faster to others. Pick out 10 constantly used sites by people on the web and chrome will load them faster, it may not even be noticeable but it's there. So overall chrome is faster. I love how you act as though a speed increase only matters when YOU can notice it.

Again, your logic is so bad that you could use it to argue that a sample survey is useless. Do you really expect someone to test every website ever made? You test certain ones that are more likely to be visited daily such as facebook or wikipedia and you base your results from there. Don't call my analogy stupid when your argument is utter nonsense.

Your analogy was indeed stupid because you are (purposely) comparing two inherently different things in order to support your argument.

"I love how you act as though a speed increase only matters when YOU can notice it."

^That is exactly my point. To me, Firefox beta loads ANY website I visit noticeably faster than Chrome because of my hardware, and software to an extent. To you it seems it's the opposite (again because of your hardware and software), and that is absolutely OK; after all, hardware and software are highly impacting variables that will determine how good other software, such as browsers, perform. <- I'm DYING to hear what is nonsensical about that.

Chrome and Firefox are just tools made for a purpose; it doesn't even have to do with preference, as I prefer Chrome's GUI over Firefox's, for instance. It simply has to do with the fact that browser benchmarks are useful for research and optimization purposes, but in reality they are useless for personal use.

Am I really saying something new here, or you're just trolling?

 

[tengeta]

How many versions did Mozilla say they were releasing this year and we still have yet to see one? Firefox only seems to get more disappointing with time, its really sad. Whats worse is that every time I try to find an alternate I come up with empty hands. Chrome is nice but I'm simply addicted to the mass of add-ons available in Firefox.

And seriously guys, whats with all the arguing over browser speed? You only notice the difference because the computer gave you a number to interpret..