Firefox 7.0 Released
by Andrew Cunningham on September 27, 2011 2:00 PM ESTHas it already been six weeks since Firefox 6.0 was released? Apparently so, since Firefox 7.0 has just been made available for Windows, OS X, and Linux users to download.
Firefox 7.0 is the first stable release to benefit from Mozilla's "MemShrink" initiative, which aims to improve the browser's speed and resource usage by reducing memory requirements and addressing memory leaks that can bog down the browser over long sessions, or for users with many tabs open simultaneously.
Other new additions include a new version of "Canvas," a Direct2D acceleration feature for HTML5 games and animations; support for the W3C navigation timing API, which can help developers measure page load time under a variety of different circumstances; and Telemetry, which can send anonymous information about your browsing sessions to Mozilla to aid in the identification of performance issues. Upon installing Firefox 7.0, you'll be given the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of Telemetry.
The full Firefox 7.0 release notes can be found here, for those interested in technical details. The update should be available to current FIrefox users now, and you can always get the latest version manually at getfirefox.com.
Source: Mozilla
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
22 Comments
View All Comments
shabazkilla - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
With how fast Chrome and Firefox are being updated I just can't see them ever being approved for use in an enterprise environment. Don't get me wrong, it's great (mostly) for consumers, but large IT shops move much slower. There are still plenty of apps out there that only work properly with IE6. Companies don't have the resources to test and validate their web apps every 6 weeks. At some point something has to give.jah1subs - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Totally agree with you. I can easily imagine that the new script for a help desk in a corporation will be:"Are you calling me about problems with Firefox or Chrome?"
"You Are."
"We do not have the resources to keep up their constant changes. Please use Internet Explorer (whatever our current supported version is)."
Thank You.
Good Bye.
Microsoft must be THRILLED.
keepme - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
that being said if sites were written respecting standards, any version of any browser should work just fine;yankeeDDL - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
If you manage to find a website where Firefox and/or Chrom does not work, chances are it is either broken (so IE won't work either) or it has been designed for all the non-standard features of IE, so you may need to go to IE anyway.personally, I haven't had an issue with websites not working in FF/Chrome for ... what, 10 years maybe? It's just one point, but nowadays it's easier that a website works with FF and does not work with IE, that the other way around.
rickcain2320 - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
Hardly. Microsoft's own browser is incompatible with its other versions. In my enterprise moving to a different Internet Explorer version is a chore. Screens stop working, and we have to put any new IE through extensive testing because every time there's "Gotchas".We're still stuck at IE7 because IE8 and IE9 won't work with some important internally developed software, and no it wasn't our fault, we stuck to browser standards.
crimson117 - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Legacy apps are one thing, but FF/Chrome don't really change very much from veersion to version, and if modern enterprise developers can't write compatible code, they've got bigger problems.Impulses - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
You'd really think so, unfortunately many of them are so incompetent that you're left with an ugly reality. I've seen a GE (as in General Eclectric) rep tell an M.D. that he needed to downgrade to IE 6 or 7 in order for his laptop to interface with a $5,000 cardio sonogram system that he leases... That's just ridiculous, I was able to teach him how to burn a disc on the rig he leases and then open it manually to extract the pertinent patient test result files, but it wasn't ideal compared to the built in (yet outdated) app with a GUI. When he switched to a Mac they basically told him he was on his own. Nevermind the security risks involved in making a medical professional run such an outdated browser in the same PC that holds patient records!keepme - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
actually Mozilla has plans for Enterprise support and its basically going to be long term releases (yea, LTS) versions of Firefox that are supported for a year or something like that.Note that this is also for schools, orgs, etc.. not just "enterprise"
ziptone - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
I object to mozilla suppressing the version numbers.When trying to dnload Firefox from mozilla.org the version number is not listed. There are no links to "release notes" or "system requirements" even though the release notes instruct you to check the system requirements before installing! Also searching for those documents in "support" returns nada.
They stopped supporting non SSE2 processors like AMD-XP the same time they started hiding the sys requirements page. I think they should start a legacy or long term support branch for the thunderbirds, XPs and such, I often browse on an older system.
semo - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
The only reason why I still use FF:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cha...
Ctrl+K is great but only if all the browsers supported it!