Download Firefox 8 Final
Today, Mozilla has released the Final version of Firefox 8 web browser for you to download.
Continuing its speedy release cycle, Firefox 8 includes a variety of changes and new web standards support. In addition to that, it now disables add-ons that are installed by a third party programs.
Here is a complete changelog:
- Add-ons installed by third party programs are now disabled by default
- Added a one-time add-on selection dialog to manage previously installed add-ons
- Added Twitter to the search bar for select locales. Additional locale support will be added in the future
- Added a preference to load tabs on demand, improving start-up time when windows are restored
- Improved performance and memory handling when using <audio> and <video> elements
- Added CORS support for cross-domain textures in WebGL
- Added support for HTML5 context menus
- Added support for insertAdjacentHTML
- Improved CSS hyphen support for many languages
- Improved WebSocket support
- Fixed several stability issues
- Fixed several security issues
About (Author Profile)
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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With version 7 changelog I thought they were kidding but now I see they are very serious about not making any serious improvements to FF. Still after installing most extensions you have to restart FF. Still very little advanced settings without searching somewhere something in config. Still Mozilla is wasting time for trivial and stupid projects like Boot to Gecko. I’m waiting for more senior developers deciding to leave this sinking ship
Asknobody
There is reason why you have to restart FF after instaling “classic” FF addons. They “may” integrate with FF to the level that normal use of FF without restarting would be impossible!
Check out JetPack addons, they do not need restarts!!! But you wont get as powerful addons as “classics”. But JetPack addons should work seamlessly on any FF version. (just like Chrome addons)
Migration to JetPack will take time (lots of it, since one addon can be writen for one of them but not both), and some addons simply need much, much, *much* more integration with FF.
Sorry but many extensions also breaks with new versions of FF, so I don’t have time to test it myself everytime and look for improvements. Only when my family members or friends come crying that in FF this or that don’t work, I spend some time looking into problem, and if I won’t find solution, I just suggest go for Chrome or Opera. They don’t use all function of “classic” extensions. Almost nobody does. Average users needs some simple options thats why for then simple extensions is way to go. Usuability and user friendliness of most popular FF extensions is just horrible. Those developers don’t now anything about easy to use or usability. Everytime when I’m trying to find how to tweka FF or popular extensions is like going into geekdom. And I don’t mention that FF is more often breaking or becoming memory hog on Facebook or other popular sites. Yeah yeah.. I could tweak there and there, and maybe there, and FF will become faster, more usuable and etc. If one extensions breaks in new version, there are million others and so on. No. Nobody should do that. Firefox was nice alternative for IE because IE suck so much, but now even IE is quite friendly but Firefox is still developing browser for geeks not so normal users
so, only visible UI changes are on vista and 7 but not on XP? on XP the icon outline is now just the icon itself that is until you hover over the icon, you see the outline.
so in future are all the browser versions gonna consist of with little to no changes to browser let alone minor updates?
Even FF8 is a bit better at everything.
FF9 will bring Azure, which will meant quite nice buff in 2D drawing speed (you know 2nd fish like MS test? now it will work normally under FF), some more stuff on addon compatibility, some more memory handling improvements.
FF10 even more work on 2D drawing, and even more on memory handling.
And you only need to wait 6 weeks if you feel unsatisfied by FF8.
And those who feel satisfied did not had to wait 12 weeks or more but only month and a half.
Where did you put Speed Dial? ^^
Firefox 9 10 to feature Speed Dial.
Not so harsh. Very little time has passed since releasing FF7. What did you expect?
im curious why are they calling this a new release cycle? i dont remember firefox receiving features in a different way when it was 3.5.1 > 3.5.2 and so on….
now its the same, except that version numbers are bigger and the leap from 7 to 8 is marked only with some insignificant updates
my firefox still freezes and i have to manually end the process, and when it has to restore 4+ tabs, it also freezes for a while, they show work those out, make it lightning fast in both performance and page load, and then they should worry about adding new features, that no one gives a fuck about
if i were the boss at mozilla, id make sure this is done long ago – ensure 3495834953894% stability and reliability, make people see for themselves that they can go with firefox, because its 100% reliable and stable and fast too, and after that i will tell the developers to start adding new features
thats almost what google did with chrome – started out with making it fast to load and load pages, lightweight, thats what caught users, now chrome is gaining popularity rapidly, while the pedantic idiots at mozilla are sucking cock…
i will still use firefox, for as long as it follows the trends
You look at it from end user perspective.
There are HUGE changes for devs, translators, addon devs, etc.
And now you will see new stable FF every 6th week, not faster not slower.
And you couple FF freezes with net availability? (my sometimes langs, not disconnection but still not working for eg 3s, and FF freezes in those 3s, also when it can not resolve url)
If you can reproduce this bug (know what to do to get this bug show up) go to FF bugzilla.
it happens randomly i wouldnt bother either way
Is it just me or does Firefox 8 have support for 3d cards that weren’t supported earlier? Either way, the browser is already perfect so complaining that it doesn’t have any new features is kind of strange. As for stability, even forcing the browser to use 3D with my unsupported notebook driver makes this browser the most stable of all choices at my disposal. IE and Chrome crash, and I especially dislike the idea of using anything made by Google.
Its not that FF is perfect, its that no BIG (from PR point of view) got to FF8. And this is no suprise. Its only 6 week for putting new features in every new FF! There will be “silent” FF versions, with even less things to show, then current one. Implementing BIG stuff, takes time, if work is not ready it will not be merged with FF Nightly!
(Azure which is BIG thing in FF9, was in development for 6 months!! before including it in FF9, and work on it will span for another 3 FF versions, till it will be finished).
Sorry but these new features is just ridiculous. Truth is that there are no new features. Just some tweaking. So Azure will be introduced half baked and still get to final FF version? Mozilla should be kidding..
Still no multiprocess browsing. Make it happen already! http://www.favbrowser.com/mozilla-to-implement-multiprocess-browsing/
You have it in FF for android.
Rendering engine is ready too.
But its addons, and other stuff that need polishing! There are people who complain about separating pugins into separate processes. Wrong multi-process implementation will be 10 times worse.
Also Mozilla is working on dev tools for webmasters adjusted to new FF.
In other words:
You have to wait to get it right.
In the mean time enjoy Azure, smaller memory footprint, etc.
Firefox’s NoScript & Ad Block FTW!!
Firefox’s third-party add-ons NoScript & Ad Block. FTFY
The new context menu could become annoying. I can easily ruin it using something like this: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=fPtU3wYr