With the recent release of Firefox 6, Mozilla is already working on its next version, Firefox 7. A beta of Firefox 7 was just released and it promises significantly less memory usage than Firefox 4, Firefox 5, or Firefox 6. In fact, Mozilla promises a 50% cut in memory usage.
So how did they do it? Mozilla utilized a two month old project named “MemShrink” that works to reduce Firefox’s memory consumption and prevent memory leaks. Mozilla claims that Firefox 7, compared to previous versions, “uses less memory…, often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less.”
Firefox 7 is slated to have faster sync of passwords and bookmarks between different sessions of the browser. We will also see a faster rendering of HTML5 canvas-based animations on Windows, and a new optional add-on that sends Mozilla performance data.
Mozilla is working on an accelerated release date for its Firefox browser which basically means we will see a new version of Firefox every six weeks. To put things in perspective, Mozilla released Firefox 4 on March 21st and Firefox 5 on June 18th. Mozilla plans to release Firefox 7 on September 27th.
Hey why not, lets talk about Firefox 8 too! Firefox 8 is expected to have more memory leak fixes. Mozilla, why cant you just fix them all at once and publish just one new version? This is getting out of hand!
Firefox 7 beta can be downloaded here. Those running Firefox 6 will be automatically offered version 7 beta.
