Another pre-alpha version of Firefox 3.7 for Linux has been made available.
Speed improvements aside there is no discernible difference between this release and the last Pre-Alpha for Linux users, but for those who live on the bleeding edge it’s well worth the download for the notable speed bump and the thrill of the ride.
The proposed interface changes for 3.7 that we saw a few months back have yet to start their path to integration. Let’s hope they come soon so we have something prettier to look at!
Speed
How does Firefox 3.7 stack up against the latest Chrome and Opera builds?
We ran a simple javascript benchmark that measures a browsers javascript speed. This helps us gauge how fast Firefox 3.7 Pre-Alpha compared to its rival browsers.
(For technical info on the benchmark see here)
Running the script 4 times in each browser and then deducing the average score the results looked as follows: –
- Firefox 3.7: 172
- Firefox 3.6: 105
- Google Chrome 5.0 (dev): 293
- Opera 10.52 beta: 273
Chrome remains in pole position as the speediest browser on the block with Opera 10.52 not far behind. Firefox 3.7 certainly builds upon it’s predecessor somewhat significantly in these tests and given it is still a pre-alpha this bodes well for the actual alpha releases to come.
Download
Users are NOT encouraged to install this release system-wide but to run it from its folder. This does not over-write your stable install.