Firefox 3.0 is supposed to be the best and fastest internet browser out there today.

Download it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

This is what I ran with Firefox 2.0.0


And this is what I ran once I installed Firefox 3.0 Beta 5


This is what I ran with IE7



Note - I ran IE7 AFTER I ran Firefox 3.0, so any question of it pulling from cache or connecting faster is irrelevant. It was slower by far.

I have Google Desktop with the System Performance gadget. I ran all test with CPU at 0%, Network at 0 kb/s and hard drive at 0 kb/s.

If you upgrade, post your before and after results!!

Article:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1648


Note: Shorter bars means faster JavaScript processing.
Neither version of Opera fully completed the MD5 part of the test, and these results have been omitted.



Note: Longer bars means better ACID 3 compliance 100 is the top score.

 

Do they have a FRC (final release canadate yet?) I have a feeling Firefox 3 and withdows XP SP3 are going to be released on the same day.

 

No word on release. They stated they've made 750 changes from the previous beta.

More Secure

[*]One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to. (Try it here!)[*]Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. (Try it here!)[*]New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!)[*]New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. (Try it here!)[*]Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.[*]Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.[*]Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.[*]Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.[*]Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.[*]Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks[/list]

Easier to Use
[*]Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.[*]Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.[*]New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.[*]Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.[*]Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.[*]Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.[*]Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.[*]Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.[*]Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.[*]Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.[*]Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.[*]Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.[*]Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.[*][Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.[*][Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.[*][Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.[/list]

More Personal
[*]Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.[*]Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.[*]Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you're seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns![*]Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.[*][Improved in Beta 5!] Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. Create and restore full backups whenever you want.[*]Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).[*]Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.[*]Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.[/list]

Improved Platform for Developers
[*]New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.[*]Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.[*]Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).[*]A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.[/list]

Improved Performance
[*][Improved in Beta 5!] Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 5, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.[*]Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.[*]Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.[/list]

 

I use 3.0 on my laptop. Haven't done a speed test yet though.

 

at work: yes, we need an upgrade

Firefox 2.0.0.13



IE 7



then Firefox 3 b5





hum.. not what I was expecting. I even performed all the test multiple times and things don't look good for firefox 3 beta.

btw, I thought everyone knew firefox was better/faster!

edit: looks like I'll just stick with stable for now. All my add-ons don't work in firefox 3 anyways.

 

^^ I know i always new firefox was better and faster :-P and the tests dont lie

IE7


firefox2


firefox3

 

firefox 2.0.0.13


firefox 3.0 beta 5


IE 7


Real player

 

IE7


FireFox2


FireFox3


IE7 actually had the highest upload, but not enough to justify its use lol.

 

cable connections seem to be offering the biggest change. majik looking at your initial tests again and the time lapse some else has to have had an effect on them. did you redo them in ff2 and ie7? You must have gotten a speed upgrade and not know it. Road runner at home does it to me occasionally. A nice surprise!

 

There was 5 minutes between Firefox Beta 3 and IE7