New Firefox looks mostly like old Firefox, but when you take it for a spin it has one big important update reports Lifehacker's David Galloway. "The new version uses the same user interface as Firefox 5, but is reported to run 20% faster." But in speed benchmark tests run by Laptop Mag's Dan Howley, any speed improvements in Firefox 6 over its predecessor were not measurable and it ran slower than Chrome and IE 9. Howley concluded the upgrade "amounted to small but nice touches."
Those include small add-ons that some users won't even notice, like highlighting the domain name of your current web page, making it easier to identify you're current location--this is particularly helpful for web browser super users, explains Howley. "That’s especially nice when you have multiple tabs open and want a quick and easy way to identify which website you are on, without scrolling through all of the page’s content." It also has a special permissions preferences section--a quick one-stop page for passwords, popups and locations and increased support for HTML5.
For those who surf on the go, the mobile update is a bit more exciting argues Endgadget's Christopher Trout. "On the Android side, version 6 makes much bigger promises, like a 'fresh visual style in Chrome Gingerbread,' enhanced image scaling, and, perhaps most importantly, it's 'faster and uses less memory.'" But with all the best changes reserved for cell phone users and not many fun user upgrades, you might want to stick with your current browser of choice.
Having kicked it around for a while now, I can say it's certainly faster than version 5 and the domain highlighting is nice, but this feels far more like it should be called Firefox 4.2 more than anything, and it really shows.
Still not worth considering it over Chrome 13, but it's catching up with IE9.
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