Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 into the wild. Not surprisingly, it’s flying off the virtual shelves. And unlike when Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 last year, its servers are staying up and reliable, so the rate of downloads is pretty incredible. This site, run by Mozilla, shows the download stats for the new browser. Overall downloads are now approaching 1.3 million worldwide, with over 350,000 of those in the U.S. But even more amazing is the number of downloads occurring each second, it’s ranging from 59 to 95 right now. Again, that’s every second.
Outside of the U.S., the browser is moving quickly in Germany, France and the UK. The claim is that it’s much faster than the previous iterations of Firefox, and based on just a quick run-through of my favorite sites, I’d say that is in fact the case. Though, to be fair, it’s hard to know if that has something to do with the fact that just about all my browser plugins are not yet working with this version.
Not surprisingly, the emphasis on speed in this version of Firefox is on its JavaScript performance. Both Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari have been making headlines recently claiming to be the fastest browsers in this regard. As you can see in the SunSpider test chart below, it appears that Firefox has made huge strides since the slow days of Firefox 2, and has now more than doubled performance over even Firefox 3. As Apple recently touted in a press release: “Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.”
So how does 1.3 million downloads in a few hours stack up against its rivals? Well, the most recent browser to offer a major upgrade was Safari, which claimed 11 million downloads in 3 days. But those numbers are tricky because Apple includes Safari updates in its regular OS X software updates, so pretty much all OS X users were at least asked to upgrade after its launch. Still, Apple claimed that of the 11 million, some 6 million were users on Windows machines. And Firefox also pings users to do auto-updates when a new version is available.
Despite its launch hiccups, Firefox 3 set the Guinness World Record for software downloads last summer. In just 24 hours, over 8 million people downloaded the browser around the world. We’ll see how this version stacks up.
You can watch the live-updating chart and map for Firefox 3.5 downloads here.
Getting me one.
To me, “much faster” doesn’t say “faster than chrome”. Pass.
True.
To me: flexibility > speed. I can’t not have my firefox mouse gestures or adblock.
I have been using 3.5 since Beta 1, it’s faster (on my PC) than IE, FF3.1, Chrome & Safari 4 by a huge margin.
Best of all, i get to keep addons, the flexibility offered by FF is simply incomparable with ANY browser out there.
True,
Firefox 3.5 offers best of speed and flexibility that no other browser can offer or manage.
have been testing this extensively since 3.5 RC3 and it is much faster than Chrome. Its unbelieveably fast.
Say no more, I am downloading Now!!
Can’t wait to check it out… thank you techcrunch, without you guys I would not have even known this was out…
I like Chrome but also enjoy working the developer tools that FF offers. The speed difference isn’t great enough for me to switch.
It’s faster than Chrome on Ubuntu..hehe…i’m sure there’ll be a linux chrome distro soon…
will wait a couple of days till add-ons become compatible
Wow, its FAST!
My iMacros Javascript macros run almost 50% faster
I’m staying with Safari 4.
Agreed. The web developer console is well done (not Firebug level, but usable) and the browser itself w/ webkit and Nitro JS is fast, fast, fast.
Why do I need to reboot to upgrade to 3.5? What did Firefox need to touch that isn’t in single user mode?
I wish it was a little slimmer.
I didn’t have to. WinXP.
I don’t believe you have to reboot, you just have to restart the Firefox itself.
With automatic updates it’s not like that many people ran out and got it.
Have the fixed the memory problems, (esp on Mac), that caused any flash viewing to become an exercise in patience and annoyance?
The program is that there are severe memory problems that cause the flash plugin to make video pause and stutter. Even on a Mac with 4 Gigs and 4 CPU’s I was forced to switch to Safari 4, which I’m using to write this.
Firefox has now become my secondary browser both at the office and at home because of this.
Interesting because I’ve had the opposite problem. Flash videos on Safari 4 take up all my system memory and my MacBook fan turns on. I’ve had to switch to Firefox because it manages flash videos much better
1,383,000 ha I added febe, a back up manager, firebug for web development (html 5 development plus editing tools plus web site speed plus CSS verification…..) and colorzilla which allows for colour picking on site. “That’all do pig” for now
More real-time Firefox 3.5 stats here: http://whos.amung.us/firefox/
It’s not so bad so far. I was impress by HTML5 video feature but I’m just not feeling the ogg format. I had a bit of a problem playing a simple wmv.
I meant mov.
Firefox was my favorite browser until it started slowing down and crashing too often. I was so frustrated that I switched to Google Chrome. I’m quite happy with Chrome. I’ll download the Firefox 3.5 and see if it wins me over or not.
me too
Just because google is good at search, it doesn’t mean that whatever they do will be great instantly. I tried chrome recently on Win XP, and it simply seemed unpolished compared to FF, which has been out for five years now. Normally I use OS X, and even though Safari 4 was noticeably quicker than FF3, I still found it lacked features that I had become used to with FF. With FF3.5 out, I don’t see any reason to use Safari on OS X.
Firefox, I loved you, for the longest time. But with your version 3.0, you failed me, left me with a buggy, slow browser that brought my Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz processor to its knees. I could do very little but move – away from you, to your competition: a nubile new browser by the name of Chrome.
Now Chrome is fast and has a lot of screen space that makes my 21 inch monitor look even more awesome. You’ve changed, lost weight, had something of a makeover with version 3.5, but Firefox, I doubt I’ll be coming back to you.
Love,
A Former Fan.
Safari 4 and Chrome are still faster, but Firefox has the extensions I crave. Extensions I cannot live without.
Wow lot of Firefox hate. It’s been my favorite browser since it was called Phoenix and it’s version number was 0.2 and the year was 2002.
Chrome is very fast, no doubt, but without extensions it’s worthless to me.
firefox rulez
All 13 of the addons I run are all compatible with FF 3.5. In fact, i think most of the addons out there are compatible. See these links for more info:
https://addons....tibility/report
“Of the 782 add-ons that make up 95% of add-on usage known to Mozilla, 84% are currently considered compatible with the latest builds of Firefox 3.5.”
https://addons....x/compatibility
MG, what addons are you using that arent compatible?
Forget which ones popped up but there were at least 3 (of the 5 I had installed).
MG, may be you are using the addons that nobody use!
That download chart is pretty amazing. I wish you could embed it.
Back to the topic, I love Firefox. I have tried the other browsers, and I always end up coming back to Firefox so I am excited about all of the news it is getting today.
Speed is not everything. It is great that Chrome runs fast (wow) but FF 3.5 comes very close to match its speed and has tons of other features available.
In addition, am I the only one that doesn’t like the “one process per tab” feature of chrome and IE8?
The task manager looks horrible and it actually uses more system resources…
Ultimately, I will stick the the only true open source (no big company behind it) browser available.
Must be, I love having it so that one web page doesn’t crash the browser or the other tabs associated with it. But I’d must rather have one process PER WINDOW, at least then i could have firefox simulate it.
I love FF, but this latest release with their choice to enable ICC Profiles is giving me a headache.
https://develop...tion_in_Firefox
https://bugzill...g.cgi?id=488800
All the speed in the world doesn’t trump the awesomeness of Firefox’s extensions. When Chrome and Safari get extensions, thousands of them, then we’ll talk.
I love firefox.
While increasing downloads are great, but only if your software works!
Am worried about lot of users complaining about crashes in minutes. It didn’t take me too long to see FF 3.5 crash on me reliably.
https://twitter...earch?q=firefox crash
i d/l it on vista just have to d/l it on ubuntu
FASCINATING
Great, more than half addons I use don’t work on 3.5 ….
It’s also much faster for me to.
It’s faster because they killed the add-ons.
heh true
Check their individual websites for updated add-ons. Some of them have not yet updated through the official FF page but still offer versions that work with 3.5
I’ve tried and tried but I just can’t get into FF, currently running Safari 4 and testing Chromium on Mac…once Chromium gets Flash, I might make a permanent switch
You’re pretty much the only guy in this world who calls it “Chromium”
I’ll wait for my essential add-ons to be ported to 3.5
woaaaaaaaaa this is really quick, Firefox has finally got the speed it lacked in previous versions.I just downloaded and this is really good. Still discovering all other minor changes that might have been introduced. Let us see how better 3.5 is apart from speed.
Sonal
USourceIT: Riskfree IT outsourcing/sourcing partner for small and medium businesses
Firefox 3.5 is great and fast, I love it. Let’s kick out the proprietary browsers…
Yeh, downloaded it. Installed it. Hooked on it immediately. (Must confess I’v been using the Beta … :p
Actually how the community’s reacted to the new FF (so far) is quite imaginable for me. So, everything is plain sailing or perhaps less exciting than last year’s download day.
However, it’s FF’s old rival that added a bit twist to my download story. Earlier today my windows XP put the little unmissasble update icon at the corner where it sat patiently to be clicked: Internet Explorer 8 is now ready. will you download and install it?
Oh~
Yea I saw that on mine’s also. A funny thing though is what Google Chrome is doing. On techbargains.com they are considered a bargain. haha I guess they need customers.
http://www.tech...Item.cfm/169203
I love FF for 1. being great and 2. for not being cheap like Google (techbargains ads) and Windows (crappy internet ads).
Even I’ve upgraded to Firefox 3.5. It’s much faster and allows you to customize and install add-ons directly in your browser. However not all add-ons are compatible with the latest version. Some of them that do work are Adblock plus, Personas, Billeo, Cooliris, Twitterfox and AnyColour. https://addons....fox/addon/12715
Now Chrome is fast and has a lot of screen space that makes my 21 inch monitor look even more awesome. You’ve changed, lost weight, had something of a makeover with version 3.5, but Firefox, I doubt I’ll be coming back to you.
Still discovering all other minor changes that might have been introduced. Let us see how better 3.5 is apart from speed.