A few days back, Mozilla released the latest version of their web browser – Firefox 5 which is just three months after the release of Firefox 4. Although it was already available, I didn’t immediately upgrade as I wanted to make sure that all the addons/plugins I use are compatible with Firefox 5. I had no plans of upgrading now but an update alert popped up earlier today so went ahead and proceeded with the upgrade. I was glad to know that only two of the current addons/plugins I use weren’t compatible.
Here are the new features and changes added to Firefox 5:
- Added support for CSS animations
- The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
- Tuned HTTP idle connection logic for increased performance
- Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
- Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
- Improved spell checking for some locales
- Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
- WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
- Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
- Fixed several stability issues
- Fixed several security issues
Compatible Addons/Plugins:
- Colorzilla 2.5.5
- Copy Link Text 1.5.0
- DownloadHelper 4.9.3
- FireFTP 1.99.4
- Fireshot 0.91
- Greasemonkey 0.9.5
- Java Console 6.0.22
- Iget 1.0.2
- NoScript 2.1.1.1
- Rainbow 1.1
- Screengrab 0.96.3
- Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.6
Incompatible Addons/Plugins:
- MeasureIt 0.4.8
- MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.4
Firefox 5 isn’t much different to Firefox 4 in terms of the user interface/design since most updates and changes are under the hood or only the core functions. Performance-wise, it also fast as the previous version and the browsing experience was smooth. Since I only updated today, it’s too early to talk about its stability but I hope that its the same as its predecessor Firefox 4 which was very stable.
The only problem that I’ve come across so far is that all WordPress keyboard shortcuts are no longer working. I’m not sure if there’s a fix, hack or workaround for this but I’ll research it and hopefully find one so I can use the keyboard shortcuts again. WordPress keyboard shortcuts enable me to work quicker and improve productivity.
Anybody else upgraded and using Firefox 5? How do you like the latest version of the web browser? Did you find any problems or issues with it? Please share your thoughts.
Thanks for sharing.Firefox 6 has been released this week but I will still cleave to the old FF4 unless they’re sure that there will be no Memory leak on it.lol…
I like the fact that they scored 97/100 in acid3 test. Anyway, the new feature “Tell web sites I do not want to be tracked” is pretty useful. You guys should really try it out.
after upgrading to version 5 i see fewer crashes . though not running on many compatible addons ..
I haven’t got time to check out FF 5 yet. But I guess I’ll just stick around with version 4 as of now.
I too have discovered my WordPress keyboard shortcuts no longer work and I’m frustrated… can’t find a solution. Please let me know if you figured it out?
update: keyboard shortcuts seem to work for “new” blog posts, but not when editing draft posts. Have asked for support in the WordPress forums: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/keyboard-shortcuts-not-working-in-mac-firefox-with-firefox-5?replies=1