Firefox 3.6 is the fastest and most advanced Firefox ever. Here’s how we did it.
The TraceMonkey JavaScript engine brings screaming fast performance to Firefox 3.6. With JavaScript that’s more than three times as fast as Firefox 3 and 20% faster than Firefox 3.5, you’ll be able to see the difference without breaking out your stopwatch.
Results of a SunSpider test on a Windows 7 machine
Mozilla Director of Evangelism Chris Blizzard demonstrates the real-world performance characteristics of Firefox 3.5 vs Firefox 3.6.
We’ve been working hard to make DOM access and manipulation even faster in Firefox 3.6. It’s over 2x faster than Firefox 3 and 25% faster than Firefox 3.5. We’ve removed overhead from our code, added new fast-access query and manipulation methods, and added support for new standards.
| * Number of runs of Dromaeo JavaScript performance test completed | |
 |
272 runs |
|---|---|
 |
540 runs |
 |
681 runs |
Firefox 3.6 includes the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support (Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora), allowing Web developers to include rich media that’s controlled using JavaScript, HTML and CSS instead of by proprietary technologies. In Firefox 3.6, videos can be shown in full screen. View documentation.
Firefox 3.6 offers new network and file access capabilities to Web developers, including the ability to select multiple files for upload in the file picker, and a new drag and drop API that makes it easy for Web sites to accept new files. A new File API, based on emerging standards, now allows asynchronous event-based access to files (see it in action). Mixed with cross-site XMLHttpRequests originally introduced in Firefox 3.5, these give Web developers the ability to build exciting mashups from multiple Web sites.
In Firefox 3.5 we introduced downloadable font support for industry standard OpenType and TrueType fonts. Now in 3.6 we’ve also included support for the new Web Open Font Format, which is supported by a large number of commercial font foundries. This new format is often faster to download than raw OpenType and TrueType fonts and offers Web designers and developers new options for building beautiful Web sites.
Knowing that users have the benefit of Firefox 3.6’s improved TraceMonkey engine, Web developers can build JavaScript-based applications and sites that are faster and more responsive than ever. View documentation.
CSS gradients allow you to display smooth transitions between two or more specified colors. Use of CSS gradients can replace images and reduce download time, create a more flexible layout, and look better while zooming. Firefox 3.6 supports two kinds of CSS gradients: linear and radial.
In Firefox 3.6, users can share their location with requesting Web sites, allowing developers to customize their applications so they deliver more useful, more relevant output. New in Firefox 3.6, developers can lookup the address corresponding to a specific location. Learn more about this feature.
Some laptops and mobile devices can detect the orientation of the laptop or device. Firefox 3.6 exposes this information to Web pages, allowing Web developers to build interesting and fun interactions - including games. View documentation.
Firefox 3.6 has improved support for JSON, with native handling of JSON objects to make encoding and decoding JSON faster than ever before. View documentation.
Multithreading support finally comes to the Web through the new Web Workers feature, which allows JavaScript code to spawn off threads to handle tasks in the background. Web applications can now take advantage of modern multicore processors. View documentation.
Support for CSS 3 media queries lets style sheets define content appearance more precisely. They now take an intelligent look at the details of whatever device is rendering your content, giving you more control over the final user experience. For example, you can render your site in one way for color printers and another for black and white. View documentation.
Firefox 3.6 supports HTML 5 offline resource caching. This lets Web applications cache static content on the user’s system for reuse instead of requiring it to be reloaded over the network each time it’s needed. The result: much faster Web application load times. View documentation.
In addition to these features, Firefox 3.6 has updated or added other CSS properties, DOM events and tools to build even more beautiful and responsive Web pages. Check out the full list on our 3.6 developer page.
