It’s fast, just like they said. It’s the version that is faster and more responsive than any previous versions, and has been optimized to run on small device operating systems such as Maemo.
I had 10 tabs open when I did the upgrade. The restarting and re-opening these tabs after the upgrade is blazingly fast. Opening a new tab is also instant, like 10 or even 20 times faster than opening a tab in IE.
Other than the noticeably performance improvement, there are also some new features that are worth noting:
- Support for a new type of them, Personas, to allow users to change Firefox’s appearance with a single click.
- Out-of-data plugins get warned to keep users safer.
- Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
- Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
- Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications.
- Support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
And many more here.
However, it still doesn’t seem to be very Windows7-friendly. It still doesn’t integrate with Taskbar very well like IE. No tab preview, no download bar indication, and the Jumplist is so basic as well. I guess the development in Mozilla wasn’t really focused on Windows platform.
To upgrade,
If you already have Firefox installed, simply go to Help, and Check for Update.
Or if you are the first time user, congratulation, just head to this page and download it there.
[Update on Jan 22, 2010]
Firefox 3.6 does support taskbar preview in Windows 7. Thanks the reader kini for pointing this out in comments.
