Mozilla Firefox

Version: 6.0.1
Date added: August 31, 2011
Price: Free
Operating system: Mac OS X 10.5/10.6/10.7/10.5 Intel/10.6 Intel
Download File:
Firefox 3.6.13 For Mac
Firefox 6.0 For Mac


The second version of Firefox to come under the new rapid-release aegis, Firefox 6 follows in the footsteps of Google Chrome, which adopted the rapid-release cycle a while ago and is now up to version 13 (at the time this review was written) despite having its first release only in 2008.

Firefox 4 had a massive impact on Firefox 5 and now Firefox 6, and so this review is not dramatically different from its predecessor. Firefox 4 had a rough time in its early development, but those days are over. The browser that you can download now is in the same speed category as its competition; offers many similar features (stronger in many areas and slightly weaker in others); includes broad, cross-platform support for hardware acceleration and other "future-Web" tech and standards; and is a must-have for Android users (download for Android).

In Firefox 6, you get more incremental updates that generally focus on making the browser work better. One of the most important improvements is that the browser now supports Mozilla's new Add-on SDK, formerly called Jetpack. This foundation lets programmers build extensions out of Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript rather than the older XUL technology. Extensions are expected to be easier to write and ought not to break when new browser versions arrive, although add-on developers must still decide whether to rewrite their existing extensions. The browser supports Mozilla's new Add-on Builder, too, which should make it easier to create add-ons.

Also under the hood, CSS animation support was turned on in Firefox 5, which meant that the browser could handle dynamic Web content that moves around a page more easily. The Do Not Track box was moved to a more prominent place in the Options menu, under Privacy. It's also now available in Firefox for Android.

Changes in Firefox 6 include a strong expansion of developer tools, better memory management for the Panorama tab grouping feature, minor security tweaks to the interface, and several critical security bug fixes. See the Features and Support section below for more details.

It's important to point out that there are four versions of Firefox available at the moment, and this review only addresses the "stable" branch, intended for general use. Firefox's other channels are Firefox beta (download for Windows | Mac | Linux); Firefox Aurora, analogous to Google Chrome's dev channel (download Aurora for Windows | Mac | Linux); and the bleeding-edge, updated-nightly Firefox Minefield (download for all versions) are respectively progressively less stable versions of the browser, and aimed at developers.

Features and support
Firefox 6's features are robust and generally competitive. There is some minor functionality missing in a few cases where the browser remains behind the competition, but Firefox is generally one of the most progressive major browsers available, an early adopter if not always an innovator.

The most important feature in the modern Firefox is Sync. As with many recent Firefox features, it started off as a rough add-on, and often deleted data. If you were scared off by its early bad behavior, you'll be glad to know that Mozilla has worked out the kinks since version 4. Sync now smoothly syncs your bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history, and tabs, not only with other computers, but also with your Android version of Firefox.

To use it, click on the Menu button and choose Set Up Sync from the left column. That will take you to a window where you can connect an existing Firefox Sync account or create a new one. Within Firefox Sync, there are two important security points. One is that Firefox encrypts your data before sending it over an encrypted connection to its servers, where it remains encrypted. Mozilla says that the company would not be able to access it even if somebody there wanted to. The second is that you have the option of setting up your own personal sync server. In an age when private data stored by corporations gets hacked and stolen with shocking regularity, setting up a personal sync server is one way to ensure that you bear the responsibility for your own data.

Another big feature in Firefox 6 is support for restartless add-ons. These add-ons are written differently from standard Firefox add-ons, and are expected to become the format for add-ons in the future. As such, not many restartless add-ons exist--only about 250 at the time of writing this review, compared with the thousands of "standard" add-ons. However, this is an improvement of more than 100 add-ons since Firefox 4 debuted in March 2011. Add-ons continue to pose a big problem for Mozilla, as older add-ons become a bottleneck for Firefox that other browsers, with their newer add-on frameworks, don't have to manage. The aforementioned Add-on SDK is designed to confront this problem directly.

Firefox 4's add-on manager was completely overhauled, with some tweaks made in Firefox 5. There's a lot of useful new technology here, as compared with the version 3.6 manager. Not only can you search for add-ons from within the add-on window using the search box in the upper-right corner, you can add them without having to jump to the external Mozilla Add-on Web site, also known as AMO. The manager calls out the AMO add-on collections, which you can create more explicitly in the Get Add-ons tab. The add-on manager also allows you to browse Personas. It's slightly annoying that clicking on an add-on group or collection opens the page in a new browser window, whereas clicking on a specific add-on opens that add-on's download page within the add-on manager. That's a very minor criticism, though.

Other changes to the add-on manager include forward and back buttons specific to the manager, in the upper-left corner, and left-side navigation tabs for specifically focusing on Extensions, Appearance, and Plug-ins. Meanwhile, two little improvements to the manager will impress keyboard junkies. There's a new hot key for pulling up the add-on manager, Control-Shift-A, and you can type "about:addons" directly into the location bar to access the add-ons manager in a tab.

The tab-grouping feature seems to be suffering a bit of an identity crisis, though its functionality is unchanged. Originally called Tab Candy, then renamed Panorama, it presents your tabs as an array of thumbnail images. The thumbnails reside in rectangular boxes that constitute a group. Tabs can be dragged from one group to another, and groups can be named and moved as well. You can add a tab to an existing group or create a new group by right-clicking on the tab and choosing Move to Group. The hot-key combo Control-Shift-E will also jump between the main interface and the Tab Group window.

The overall idea is to make it easier to switch from one tab to another, to group or regroup related tabs, and to get a global view of what's going on with your tabs. It's potentially a big improvement in browser usage, compared with aiming a mouse at an ever-skinnier tab, cycling through a list with Alt-Tab keystrokes, or pecking at a drop-down menu to reach the tabs that overflowed off the deep. Firefox 6 changed how Panorama interacted with the browser's memory management, so that tabs now load at launch only for the active group.

The bookmarks and history menus have been redesigned, and now the hot keys open them by default as sidebars. Go through the Menu button to get the full menus. We were actually quite impressed with the layout of the menu button options for bookmarks and history, finding it much more useful with quick access to recently closed tabs and new bookmark tags. This is probably the most useful in-browser bookmark manager around, especially if you enable Sync and use it with your Android phone or tablet.

Another new feature is App Tabs, which reduces the width of a tab to its favicon and pins the tab permanently on the left. The tab will glow when updated, a useful indicator for things like Web mail. And when you start typing into the location bar, one of the search choices will be related open tabs so that you can quickly switch to an existing tab.

Under the hood there are tons of changes. The biggest is full hardware acceleration across all platforms, which means that Firefox draws on your graphics card to speed up complex rendering. You'll see dramatic HTML5 support, including for high-definition WebM video, and broad support for the HTML5 canvas, video, audio, geolocation, drag and drop, and form tags. OpenType fonts are supported, as are CSS3 and newer JavaScript values. WebGL and hardware acceleration give the browser a massive boost, which we'll discuss in the Performance section below. HTML5 also gets some love in Firefox 6, with improvements and additional support for the new Window.matchMedia API for Web optimization, and WebSockets and server-sent APIs for building more-interactive and responsive real-time Web-based apps and games.

The short version of all this is that Firefox 6 is on the cutting edge of the next generation of Web standards, and that benefits you immensely by offering faster rendering times of Web sites that can do more.

A new Web Developer menu in Firefox 6 collates tools for building and debugging Web sites into one location. These include the new Scratchpad tool, which browsers like Opera and Chrome have had for some time. It allows developers to test JavaScript before implementing it. The Web console feature also has a new autocomplete option and can have its location customized.

There's a decent list of other, smaller changes to Firefox that are worth pointing out because they'll enhance your workflow in the browser. One of these is Switch to Tab. Open a new tab, start typing the name of an already-open tab, and the URL will appear in the drop-down with "Switch to Tab" beneath it. Select that one, and the new tab closes and you're whisked to the preexisting tab. It's a great trick for cutting down on the amount of time it takes to sift through 45 open tabs, and removes the chance of accidentally having the same tab open twice or more.

The location bar--or as Mozilla calls it, the Awesome Bar--retains the features introduced in Firefox 3.5, such as the options to search your history and bookmarks and to tap your default search engine to provide you with quick results. However, the "feeling lucky" instant jump to what it thinks is the Web site you're most likely to be looking for has been disabled because of internal Mozilla concerns about accidentally sending personal information to the search provider.

Private browsing reflects the browser's faster start-up and shutdown times so that it jumps between standard browsing and Private Browsing mode significantly faster than in version 3.6.

The new Do Not Track feature indicates via a header notification that you want to opt out of targeted advertisements. However, it requires that the Web site you're viewing, and therefore that site's developers, respect the header itself. While this is great for future-proofing the Web, as implemented at the time of writing, not many Web sites have taken notice of it. While that doesn't mean it won't eventually have a big impact, that time is not now, and it's better to install an add-on like Adblock Plus to get more-complete ad-tracking protection.

There are two smaller yet important changes to the way that Firefox protects you. One is the implementation of the Content Security Policy, which is designed to block one of the most common types of browser threats, cross-site scripting attacks, by allowing sites to tell the browser which content is legitimate. Though CSP also places the burden on the sites' developers, it's backward-compatible and aimed mostly at well-known sites hosting immense volumes of data and content.

Another security improvement is the implementation of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This prevents your log-in information from being intercepted by telling Firefox to automatically create a secure connection to a site's servers.

The "identity block," the colored left-most section of the URL, has been given a refresh to better call out the Web site you're on, and the URL bar itself now changes the text color of the URL you're on so that the domain is black, for easy identification, while the rest of the URL is gray. This is a small security change, and one that's been previously available to people who are comfortable changing their about:config, but it's definitely a strong visual cue that helps you avoid getting spoofed.

The new feature set alone makes it worth upgrading to the latest version of Firefox. While some older Firefox users may feel that these features add unnecessary bloat to a browser that offers add-ons specifically so that you can customize your browsing experience, Firefox 4 was actually dramatically faster than Firefox 3.6, and Firefox 5 continues to perform well. We address the browser's behavior in the section below.

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