Firefox 10 Releases Today, Fixes Add-On Compatibility Issues
by Andrew Cunningham on January 31, 2012 12:40 PM ESTFirefox 10 is due to release today, continuing Mozilla's commitment to the six-week release cycle it switched to last year. As usual with these rapid-release browsers, Firefox 10 brings a couple of features you'll probably notice and a few more that you probably won't. The browser is available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, Intel versions of Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7, and most flavors of Linux.
Firefox 10's banner feature is a tweak designed to fix add-on compatibility - most add-ons compatible with Firefox version 4 and later will now automatically be marked as compatible by the browser without any additional updates from the add-on's developer. This is true both of add-ons downloaded from Mozilla's repository, or add-ons installed from elsewhere on the Internet. This was done to ease the pain of upgrading for heavy add-on users, and to make way for Mozilla's silent Firefox updater, which is tentatively scheduled to land in June with the release of Firefox 13.
Mozilla has also hidden the browser's forward button unless it can actually be used, implemented anti-aliasing for WebGL, added support for CSS3 3D transforms, added full-screen APIs to allow for full-screen web apps (though still no official support for Lion's Full Screen mode), and a few other small feature and bug changes.
FF10 is also the first release of the browser to be offered as an "Extended Support Release" or ESR, which will be offered as a separate download - as we reported earlier this month, the ESRs will be good for a year, and will keep the same major version number and rendering engine while being kept current with security and bug fixes. The ESR is intended to replace Firefox 3.6, which has been patched continuously as Firefoxes 4 through 9 have been end-of-lifed, and is meant to placate enterprise administrators and others upset by the new rapid release cycle. Firefox 3.6 is tentatively scheduled to be discontinued on April 24, so if you've stuck by it for the last year you should begin testing the new version soon.
Source: Mozilla
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cptcolo - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
In the real world, I only see Firefox 10 gobble up memory. I have 3.6 and 12 64-bit (Nightly). Firefox 12 gobbles up memory and fails to refresh images quickly when switching tabs. For all its gains in load times, the image problem has left me to use good old Firefox 3.6 most of the time.Don't believe me? Try out FF4 of later and open numerous tabs with large pictures and cycle through them, they fail to populate the screen. FF3.6 does not have this problem. Chrome is the worst offender.
Malih - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Have you tried disabling GPU acceleration in Firefox 4 and up? There could be problem with GPU drivers and all that.I always disable GPU acceleration on my desktop as they tend to make the GPU fan spins at higher RPM since I'm overclocking.
xytc - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Since Firefox version 4 every new version that came out did bring an improvement over the old one. Firefox 9 was pretty fast and if you add No-Script to it it's even faster plus FlashBlock and Adblock plus. I've disabled as well all the Plugins except for ShockWave Flash and is way faster with all the plugins disabled, disabling Java plugins, Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Media Player and DRM did bring considerable speed boosts and the browser is way more snappier.Also some extensions may slow it down so it's better to use only a few of them the essential ones.
RU482 - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
Geez, Firefox has more updates than Adobe ReaderMartinT - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - link
"Firefox 10 Releases Today"Shouldn't this read either "Mozilla releases Firefox 10 Today" or "Firefox 10 [to be] released today", much like:
"Firefox 10 is due to release today"
should read "Firefox 10 is due to be released today"?
longgoner - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Absolutely. Maybe the author wanted a succinct and engaging title, but I'm glad to know that I'm not the only reader bothered by it.AnandTech, I've been a reader for several years now, and I appreciate your content and valuable opinions very much. Keep up the good work! But please improve your style a bit. Mind the transitive/intransitive verb (ab)usage here. Thank you.
Andrew.a.cunningham - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
why don't you mind YOUR FACE :-DReading a couple of my other pieces, I realize that my use of the word "release" as a verb is pretty fluid - it just doesn't happen to be a pet peeve of mine, so I don't really watch out for it (on the other hand, I went way out of my way to avoid the redundancy of "ESR release"). I'll leave this article as it is but I'll try to watch out for it in the future.
Very little that's posted up here gets run through an editor first - I'll keep working to improve. In the meantime, thanks for understanding, and thanks for reading!
Impulses - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 - link
Meh, it's probably not the right syntax but I actually don't mind it... It allows for shorter article titles or cramming extra info on the tail end, as he did here. It's pretty low on the list of language butchering habits that web writers propagate these days IMO, and there's something to be said for language evolution...longgoner - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
My apologies, Andrew. Just general constructive criticism (because I care about the site), not directed at you. I took the opportunity because my sentiment had been building up over time. I'm a tech writer, too, so I can appreciate your position. I agree with Impulses' comment, to some extent, but error-free posts are probably a bare minimum, even if most readers don't care, don't notice, or are more interested in content than style. (As tech _writers_, we must care about both, of course.) Editing seems essential, and readers commenting on errors instead of content is a sign of problems. Thanks again.Andrew.a.cunningham - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
No apology necessary! As a writer, I'm sure you understand the need to balance good editorial content, grammatical correctness, and timeliness. I know I make mistakes, but I'm always trying to improve.I agree that it'd be great to get a dedicated editor to polish our stuff and make us look better. It's not my decision to make, but I'll mention it to Anand next time we have a Pipeline meeting. :-)