Firefox users!

[Jung]

First, if you didn't know, 1.0.1 was released a few weeks ago; it fixes some memory and stability issues.


I found some optimized 3rd party builds of Firefox, and they're great. This guy is repackaging the latest builds with optimized code. I found this on the Mozillazine forums, and they come highly recommended. I've been using his M2 build of 1.0.1 for a few days now, and it's a lot faster, and uses less memory than the official release.

I develop and build optimized versions of certain Mozilla applications, specifically the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, and the Mozilla Suite. My builds are designed for the Windows OS platform(s) and provide enhanced security, stability, and speed. For example, with the Firefox browser, I have found a noticable increase in browsing speed when compared to the official Firefox builds, as evidenced by this analysis. The builds I release are "Community Edition" builds and thus are not officially supported by the Mozilla Foundation. Please read this disclaimer for a full explaination.

I am currently releasing four versions, or "M" builds - M0, M1, M2, and M3, of the Firefox browser, Thunderbird email client, and the Mozilla Suite. Each M version is designed to exploit features of particular processors and/or instruction sets and is thus limited in its compatibility with other processors. If you are uncertain what type of processor you have, or what instruction set(s) your processor supports, you can use the following free utility to identify your processor: CPU-Z. Please read the M descriptions carefully before downloading and using my builds.

I do run a support forum and strongly suggest you look there first if you have questions concerning my builds, their installation, and their use. If you have questions that are not covered yet, please post them in the forum or contact me

If you haven't upgraded yet, you should give these optimized builds a shot; they're noticeably better than the official build. He has full explanations of the M numbers here, and install instructions here.

 

[Freakless]

You wouldn't happen to know where I could find a tutorial on how to make a skin for it? b/c I can't find any documentation on it...

 

[Jung]

Have you tried searching www.mozilla.org or www.mozillazine.org? I know I've seen tutorials before, but didn't bother with them; PixelZilla is good enogh for me. I do know, that you'd need to know XUL and CSS at a bare minimum.

 

[Grettir]

Noticiable? Like 5% or 25%? I think im not prepeared to install those builds if the "noticable" change is thus that you would have to "peer your eyes to see it"...but anyways, thanks for the info dude

 

[Jung]

I'm not sure how exactly I could convey my idea of noticeable to you, but... These builds are, in my experience, a LOT better than the official builds. They're quicker to respond, load pages more quickly and are definitely more stable. Even after leaving my browser open over night with 20 tabs open, it's still quick to respond, and switches tabs like it was just opened.

I can understand not wanting to try them out, but should you decide to, the installation process is pretty painless. In less than five minutes I had the official build uninstalled, folders deleted, the new build install and all of my bookmarks/cookies/settings etc switched over.

For those who may not understand the point in these builds, or the reason they're faster I'll explain briefly.

These builds are compiled with processor specific flags, so they run better on those systems. The official releases are just compiled for Win32, so they're not very efficient when compared. This guy is also adding some other features to address some memory management and stability problems.

 

[Freakless]

Yah, I was able to open about 300 windows before it froze with the new build, if you don't believe me I will do it again and take a SS.

PS: I know that it was a stupid and pointless thing to do....

 

[Hypertron]

I like it, i can notice a pretty good change.

 

[Jung]

Yah, I was able to open about 300 windows before it froze with the new build, if you don't believe me I will do it again and take a SS.

PS: I know that it was a stupid and pointless thing to do....

I was talking about tabs, not windows. I usually browse with at least 5 or 6 tabs open, usually more. After having the browser open for a while, it just becomes sluggish when switching between tabs or opening new ones. These builds are a lot better with memory management, and fixed all of my problems.


Just a side note: If you open the properties of the Firefox shortcut and add /Prefetch:1 after the quoted path, it'll enable Windows prefetching and make the browser open faster.