Mozilla has rolled out a new release of its Firefox web browser today and the company says that this release is faster than any before it. Firefox’s speed did improve when Mozilla rolled out its Quantum browser last year but now it’s going to get even faster. That’s not something that ardent Firefox users are going to complain about, to be honest.
To make Firefox faster, Mozilla has prioritized its performance management “to-do” list. It looked at the areas which it felt could be delayed in favor of making pages appear faster so that users can browser quicker.
This involves delaying the set Timeout so that scripts for things that the user needs first are prioritized or not loading the auto-fill module if there’s not an actual form on the page to complete. Mozilla says that this should result in speed improvements between 40-80 percent.
Keeping dozens of tabs open in the browser uses your PC’s memory and that results in lower performance. Firefox is now going to detect when your PC’s memory is running low, which it defines as lower than 400MB, and will automatically suspend unused tabs that you haven’t looked at in a while. The tabs will reload to right where you left off if you decide to view them again.
There are several other features, including privacy-focused improvements, included in the latest release of Firefox Quantum which is now available for download.