Mozilla Firefox 8.0
In today’s day and age, the internet is what our entire lives revolve around. Whether it’s kids gathering information for homework, shopping online or using social media, the internet is very prevalent in our daily actions. Of course the explosion of the online world has brought about much competition among companies to create the “best” browser. During the 1990s Netscape became the pioneers in web browsing. After Netscape came Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera Software’s Opera, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome. Since then it has been an ongoing debate as to which web browser is the best. In this article we will take a look at Mozilla’s Firefox.
Mozilla seems intent on taking the lead as the best browser as is evident from the speed with which the company is updating their browser versions. In 2011 they have released four improved versions of their browser one after the other, continually aiming for the best. It seems as if they have created a quick update cycle of their own where every few weeks we see a new version ready for download. From the looks of it, one would say that Mozilla might be overdoing it, but who’s to say? This rapid release of improvements may make them the undisputed king of internet browsing one day.
Only one month after releasing Firefox 6, Firefox 7 was released. Six weeks later, Firefox 8 was released. Firefox 7 was a major improvement from the previous versions where we saw major significant changes in all the right places. With Firefox 7, Mozilla introduced a better handling of RAM. This was enabled by a new feature known as “MemShrink “ which enables one to run the new Firefox with 25% less resources of the operating system as compared to its predecessor. Along with improved CSS3 came better support for MathML. There were also numerous small changes including hiding the ‘http://’ in the url.
With Firefox 8 Mozilla does not give us many drastic changes. It presents small modifications to Firefox7. Firefox 8 has been promised to be a sophisticated and highly refined version. The interface of this new version is almost the same as the previous one. It cannot be said for sure but it has been estimated that Firefox 8 has a 10,000 add-ons for the users. This may be a step towards a much more personal browser experience. For those who fear about unwanted add-ons the good news is that Firefox 8 has come to their rescue. Following in the footsteps the Windows Explorer 9, Firefox has introduced the feature of add-on notifications. You can now easily add or disable add-ons from one screen. Also add-ons by an undesired 3rd party are by default disabled. An amazing fact is that the Firefox 8 is being reported to be 20% times faster in processing speed as compared to Firefox 5. The awe-inspiring part of this is that the two browser versions were introduced only 5 months apart. WebGL support has been improved in their latest version. Many stability issues which had been experienced in the earlier versions of Firefox have now been fixed with this new version.
It is not all good news as Firefox 8 just a few days after its release is facing some criticisms while being under very strong scrutiny. Among the criticisms is a slower start up speed than other browsers and no built in flash or PDF reader. But no verdict can yet be passed as the new web browser is still in its Alpha phase. We’re confident that we will see improvements with it in future releases.
It is still a question as to whether Mozilla can prove itself to be the best amongst all web browsers out there. With competitors like Google and Microsoft, winning this race will not be a piece of cake. But with the determination Mozilla has demonstrated this year with releasing new and improved versions one after the other, success may not be all that far away from them.
