Firefox 15

With its rapid-release schedule, Firefox now gets a new version number every month and a half, and some versions are bigger than others in terms of features. Firefox 15 could be said to be in the middle of this range?unless you're big user of extensions, in which case this is an important release. That's because version 15 attacks a problem a lot of longtime users have experienced?excessive memory use by browser extensions. The new release also implements background updating similar to that used by Google Chrome, and adds a bunch of features for Web developers. New capabilities will let developers build fast, precise 3D games for the Web.

Partly because of these constant improvements and partly because it's not the product of a large corporation but rather an international open-source effort, I'm still a big Firefox fan. ?And there's not much that other browsers can do that Firefox can't. It has lots of HTML5 support, the best extension and customization capabilities, and a unique "Panorama" tab organizer. While you can get all this Mozilla goodness for Windows, Mac, or Linux, I evaluated the Windows version for this review. On the mobile side, you can read our review of Firefox for Android.

The big interface changes all came along in version 4. Mozilla started emulating Google's Chrome (free, 4.5 stars) Web browser in JavaScript speed and minimalist interface, as other Windows browser competitors Internet Explorer 9 (free,? 3.5 stars) and Opera 12 (free, 3.5 stars) have, as well.

Firefox 15 can nearly match Chrome on JavaScript speed, and Mozilla's browser holds its own when it comes to HTML5 support and a trimmed down interface that gives the Web page center stage. But when compared side-by-side with Chrome, Firefox falls just a bit short in terms of HTML5 support and whiz-bang features like Chrome Instant, which loads pages from your history before you even finish typing their addresses or search terms in the address bar.

In version 9, we got better "Do Not Track" privacy support (something that's still in only in pre-beta form for Chrome), and improved HTML5 standard support. Firefox 7 added better use of memory by the browser itself, addressing one of the most common complaints I've heard about Firefox over the past few years. It also sped up startup times, in which Firefox has long trialed competing browsers.

With version 15, Mozilla has attacked a memory-use problem that wasn't entirely its fault: overuse of memory by extensions. Since one of the main reasons to use Firefox is its wealth of extensions to customize and add features to the browser, their effect on memory consumption is important for Mozilla. I extended my Firefox with the top 10 extensions, running it on an 8GB RAM system with a 3.4GHz Intel Core 2 processor. Here's what I saw when loading the same ten media-heavy sites in the browsers:

Browser	Memory Consumed with 10 Websites Loaded (in MB?lower is better)
Firefox 15	335
Maxthon 3.4	407
Internet Explorer 9	545
Chrome 21	679
Opera 12	696

I added memory used by Firefox's plug-in container process to its total here, and let each browser run for several minutes with all the sites open. Not only does Firefox show the least memory consumption for the same group of sites loaded at the same time, but a very encouraging observation was that Firefox's memory use would occasionally drop, as the program freed up bytes it no longer needed. Opera, which used the most memory for the same sites, takes the approach of caching site content in memory so that the sites load faster if you revisit them.

Install
A simple 16MB download gets you the Firefox 15 Windows installer. When you run it you'll lose your old version of Firefox. The latest Firefox is available for Mac (30MB) and Linux (17MB) as well as for Windows 7, Vista, and XP?the last of which even Internet Explorer 9 (Free, 4 stars) can't claim. You can import bookmarks from any other installed browsers on first run, but setup is as uncomplicated as it is for Chrome. Firefox also now makes it easy to choose a search provider other than Google, but surprisingly, not as easy as Chrome does. Mozilla also offers a Firefox with Bing version, which uses Microsoft's Web search built in.

Mozilla has been working towards silent updates for Firefox since at least the summer of 2010. And starting with version 15 this effort finally has come to fruition?you no longer need to explicitly update Firefox; it happens after a restart of the browser without an interrupting update procedure. The Firefox installation gets around Windows' User Access dialog in a more orthodox way than Google Chrome's automatic updates. Chrome installs in a non-standard, non program folder, which some consider a potential security risk. Firefox, however, uses a "service" rather than a standard program process for the update to avoid the UAC dialog.

Interface
Firefox's interface is in line with the trend of "less is more"?less space taken up by the browser frame and controls and more space for Web pages. The page tabs have moved above the address bar, and as with Opera 12, there's just a single menu option in the form of the orange Firefox button at top left. You can re-enable the standard menus by hitting the Alt key.

With version 13, Firefox filled one remaining gap between it and pretty much every other browser?its new-tab page was completely blank, where others like IE and Opera long offered a grid of frequently visited and favorite sites, as well as the ability to re-open closed tabs. Firefox has not only added tiles for most-accessed sites on the new-tab page, but included lots more settings on its home page. As in most other browsers, you can customize what's on these thumbnails, and they shrink and enlarge as you resize the browser window.

You can also remove sites and pin and unpin them to the new-tab page. But you can't specify which sites to include: They're chosen by frequency of your visits. It's not quite up to the level of Safari's beautiful 3D Top Sites page or Opera's Speed Dial, which even offers live information on its pinned tiles. And most of the others let you re-open closed sessions?Firefox's default home page lets you do this, though I'd like to see the choice on the new-tab page, too. Anyway, it's good to see that Firefox finally helps you out a little when you open a new tab. If on the other hand, you don't want this view, a button at top right turns it off, reverting to the plain white, blank tab page.

The Home button is to the right of the search bar, and a bookmark button appears to the right of that. That bookmark button only appears when you don't want the bookmark toolbar taking up browser window space. This gives you one-click access to frequently needed Web addresses. But I wish that, like IE's star button, the button also let you see recent page history. You can still call up the full bookmark manager, which lets you do things like importing bookmarks from other browsers, search, and organize. And the full History dialog does let you see all recent visits, but it's not as convenient as IE's star dropdown.

Firefox is one of the last remaining browsers to still use separate address and search boxes, which is good for those who like to keep those two activities separate. That doesn't mean, however, that a search won't work in the address bar, aka the "awesome bar." That tool, which drops down suggestions from your history and favorites whenever you start typing, was pioneered by Firefox and copied by all other browsers. Another tweak is that when one of its suggested sites is already open in a tab, you can click on a "Switch to tab" link, preventing you from opening more tabs unnecessarily?a useful tweak.

As part of its leading extensibility, Firefox has always been the browser most open to allowing different search providers, including specialized search like shopping, reference, or social. It was one of the first to support the OpenSearch format. The other popular browsers now do so, too, but Firefox can automatically detect search services on a page and let you add them from the search bar. And Firefox's built-in Twitter search option makes it easy to find Twitter personalities worth following as well as popular photos and videos on the social network.

The Mac version of Firefox integrates well with Apple's latest desktop operating system, Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Mozilla's browser supports the OS's two- and three-finger swiping gestures for moving between apps and pages in full screen, and the theme design matches Mountain Lion's toolbar and icon stylings. With version14, we finally got full-screen operation in OS X, but it still doesn't support multitouch trackpad webpage zooming, as Safari does.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/839o723yZF0/0,2817,2349494,00.asp

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