Whatever happened to small point releases? It was only mid-August when Firefox 6 bolted out of its pen, and overnight, Firefox 7 was released for PC, Mac and Linux.
The key new feature is better memory management — something that’s long been a stick to beat Firefox with — along with the tagline that it offers “A New Look, Super Speed and More Awesomeness”. Its claimed additional awesomeness is available to download now. [Mozilla]
Picture: Mozilla
ajr
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 9:55 AM22tabs open and sitting around 500Mb memory usage. That’s not been uncommon for me in previous versions of firefox, I found after leaving firefox open for a while the memory will continue to gradually increase until it sits around 1-1.5Gb mem. Guess I’ll just have to let it run and see what happens.
Roachless
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 9:59 AMMemory has never been a problem for me and Firefox. It has been my prefered browser as far back as I can remember, and I will continue using it for as long as it is better than the alternatives. I Will be downloading this as soon as I get home from work!
wsDK_II
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:31 AMWell lying doesnt suit you – “memory has never been a problem for me” Mate, hate to break it to you but all version of firefox use a lot of mem, usually 400mb min.
no one is immune to this. The only way you would have been immune to this is if you have about 8GB plus, but it doesnt change the fact that firefox uses the most memory out of every browser.
The best at the moment is IE9
I'm Joe King
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 6:09 PMI think you will find your claims to be unfounded. A bit of benchmarking research could tell you that…
With one two tabs open, firefox is consuming 230,000kb of memory on my system and making hardly any discernible difference in system performance albeit 4gb ram.
gsdgfsvae
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 6:49 PMhehehehe i’m getting less than 100mb mem usage with firefox 7 :)
blueevo
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 9:59 AMugh sick of these updates. doesnt look like it will add anything useful apart from breaking all my extensions.
I really couldnt care less if my browser uses up a little more memory. I have a heap in this computer.. so meh
lolwut
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:07 AMgreat news….been an avid fan of since the era of mozilla with the memorable t-rex logo
TvZ
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:14 AMupdated, restarted and had it open for 7 minutes before the first crash…ffs.
IJustKnowStuff
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:17 AMJust hope they finally fix the hanging/crashing issue that’s been occurring for the last 2 versions.
Labrys
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:26 AMThis comment has been deemed inappropriate and has been deleted
red t-rex
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 2:56 PMI use it at work a lot with Firebug and I agree the last 2 versions have not been very good. Clicking on a link can be a 50/50 proposition as to whether it will take me there or just sit there spinning away. It has me using IE9 most of the time now.
Luke
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:21 AM“A New Look, Super Speed and More Awesomeness”
What new look, version 7 looks like v6 which in turn looks like version 5… It doesnt look any different.
I have noticed it seems to be running faster.
IJustKnowStuff
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:41 AMI’m the same, been using Chrome most of the time, but I still prefer FireFox because I like the menu’s and add-ons better. But as I said, I find myself using Chrome more often than not.
Jettimon
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 11:28 AMLink sends me to 6.0.2?????
Christian
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 1:23 PMJust checked my version
I’m still on 3.6 at work!
go figure
wooktree
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 3:01 PMyep, looks same to me as well. Exactly the same!
Jen
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 6:05 PMIt’s too soon for an upgrade. Way too soon.
Steve
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 8:01 PMI ditched Firefox precisely due to the memory hogging, moving to Opera and finally to Chrome. As much improvement as this update is, it’s come far too late and it’s a goddamn bitch to break in a browser.
Firefox doesn’t just have to match Chrome, it has to top it and right now, it’s not happening, especially with Chrome extensions.
Richard
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 9:34 PMNice to see them address it even if I’ve now also moved to Chrome after a few years of being a loyal user.
I still thought it was rather insulting back in the day when not only fans but people working for Mozilla would say there was no memory issues though…that it was a feature. Yes, keeping background tabs in memory to enable them to reopen quickly can be classed as a feature. When I frequently saw the browser hit 1gig, sometimes 2 gigs of memory use it did however become a memory issue.
But yeah, I can’t see myself going back unless Google does something to crap over chrome. I tend to get pretty cosy with my browser so its not so much that a new one will draw me towards it but rather the current one will push me away as Firefox did.
Ash
Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 10:22 AMCurrently 22 tabs open in FF7 and using 1,073,530kb of memory and counting.