Firefox 6 Released

Mozilla recently released Firefox 6 somewhere around August 16th, 2011 / August 17th 2011 give or take depending on where in the world you live.

I am not sure why Mozilla is putting out new versions of Firefox at such a rapid rate lately. Version 4, 5, and now 6 do not look much different. The features seem to be the same or very similar. The only thing that comes to mind is maybe they are trying to boost the version to be more in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, and Google Chrome 13 number range.

 

If you check the Mozilla addon compatibility checker for Firefox 6:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility

You will see that they are claiming 95%-98% addon compatibility at the time of this post.

I haven’t upgraded yet. I usually prefer to wait until a new version has been out at least a few weeks so any bugs or other issues can be worked out. On top of that I like to wait until most addons are compatible, but if this release is boasting 95%-98% compatibility I may check it out sooner.

I wasn’t too impressed or happy with Firefox 4x at all. Firefox 5 has been a slightly better performer, but I was hoping for more out of it. Whether Firefox 6 will be any better than the previous version only time will tell. Hopefully it’s not worse. I used to think that it’s not possible to be any worse, but believe me it is possible.

It is too early to provide a review at this time. Even the assorted ones I have found online haven’t given it enough time to provide an accurate opinion of its performance.

As a long time Mozilla Firefox user myself I can tell you after just about any upgrade it appears to be fast and smooth. Several weeks later, give or take depending on if you are a power user or not, it slowly deteriorates. It tends to slow down quite a bit, and use a lot of cpu memory/ram resources. People usually don’t give it enough time to see this before they are posting reviews.

I try to remain hopeful and optimistic when it comes to new versions, but I don’t expect anything to really amaze or wow me when it comes to Firefox anymore.

I am not complaining. I do like Firefox. The free plugins are amazing and save me considerable amount of time when working on websites. I just wish Mozilla could get the memory consumption and usage down a bit more.

There are some things I like about Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and yes even Microsoft Internet Explorer. I wish I could pick and chose the things I like about each and merge them into one web browser. At least they continue to compete with one another, which hopefully will bring new technology and features to us end users.

At any rate if you are a fan of Mozilla Firefox and you are interested in upgrading…

You can download the latest Firefox 6 directly from Mozilla here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/