Download Firefox 15 Alpha 2
New Aurora build revealed.
If you are a huge Firefox fan then we have some good news for you, the latest Aurora build has recently hit the channel and does indeed include a couple of neat improvements and features.
Starting from Firefox 15, users will be able to view PDF files inside the web browser, thanks to the native PDF support.
Another neat new feature is a support for the SPDY networking protocol v3, which is currently being tested in Chrome’s Canary builds as well.
Are those the only changes? Not really, here is what else is coming:
Firefox 15 Alpha Changelog
– Improvements around memory leaks caused by some add-ons
– JavaScript debugger integrated into developer tools
– New layout view added to Inspector
– The CSS word-break property has been implemented.
– New responsive design tool allows web developers to switch between desktop and mobile views of sites
– Native support for the Opus audio codec added
– The source element now supports the media attribute
– The audio and video elements now support the played attribute
In addition that that, Firefox 15 also includes a new way to handle Flash crash reports, which will help Mozilla to diagnose and reduce Flash crash rates.
Download
Firefox 15 Aurora 2
[Thanks, MrX1980]
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Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
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Firefox 15 has been on the Aurora release channel since early June and by this time next week it will be on the beta channel.
The biggest news is the patch landed to fix bug 695480.
http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/05/02/memshrink-progress-week-45-46/
This means that add-ons will no longer suffer from memory leaks. Well, there may be some that leak memory, but the number will have been greatly reduced. It’s reduced to the point where Nicholas Nethercote has said on his blog that he is crossing the add-on memory problems off his list of “Big Ticket Items”. He’s going to write more about it in his next post on August 8th.
Memory
problems in the Firefox browser have been fixed about 6 months now.
It’s got to the point where there aren’t really any issues worth talking
about.
However, part of the reason Firefox STILL has a reputation for
being a memory hog is the fact that the add-ons leak memory.
Most people
won’t realise this and continue to blame Firefox itself for the horrendous
memory consumption, instead of the add-ons which aren’t necessarily built by
Mozilla.
This single fix resolves all those problems with
countless add-ons, so the effect will be that perceived Firefox memory
problems will all but vanish for anyone using Firefox 15 or higher.
Thing
is, this fix isn’t even on the ‘major new features’ list, and so not
many people are talking about it. The effect however will be massive.
Everything else is simply icing on the cake. Firefox 15 is released on August 28th.
Alpha 2?
It’s the Aurora channel.
Nightly (Alpha 1) -> Aurora (Alpha 2) -> Beta -> Release.
no RC ?
It’s just the way Mozilla’s channels work.
Same with Google – no “RC” channel, just Chromium -> Canary -> Dev -> Beta -> Stable.
Firefox is more stable in my opinion as I haven’t experienced any bugs or crashes at all (and I am using the Nightly builds).
Thanks for the info.
That’s true, I mostly posted this because of the new flash crash handler that was recently added.
There may be a release candidate, but consider this. It’s now Sunday morning where I am and the stable release of Firefox 14 is going to be out on Tuesday evening.
I’m currently using the 7th beta release of Firefox 14. It’s spent 6 weeks at nightly, 6 weeks at aurora and nearly 6 weeks at beta by the time I use it. I doubt there is much difference between a release candidate and what I’m on now.
Release candidates were more applicable when the rapid release cycle was new. Now that the process has matured and has gone through 9 releases, they’re obsolete. The first beta builds are now RC quality, with very few changes being made. I’ve used all the channels and the only one that exhibits stability/performance issues is Nightly. These days even Aurora builds are perfectly stable and fine for every day browsing.
I agree.
I may experience stability issues in the Nightly builds but that RARELY happens, if ever. Aurora is stable enough for everyday browsing and the Beta channel is like the RC stage. I think Mozilla have a better way of working even though Google did it first.
I hear that there are some Mozilla devs that don’t like the quick release schedule, but for Mozilla it works just fine IMHO.
No comment needed …. just read the article people.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/internet-web-apps-and-networking/2121-k-meleon-firefox-comparison-and-history.html