Firefox 3.0 is three times faster than IE7

Before Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 version was released last Monday, it was tested by users and bloggers. The results of some of the head-to-head benchmark tests, between the various browsers, were posted on the Mozilla Links blog.

According to the benchmark tests, Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 is 53% faster than Opera 9.5 beta, twice as fast as Apple’s Safari browser and three times faster than Microsoft’s IE7.

Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 is also substantially faster than earlier versions of the open source browser. This is due to Mozilla’s focus on implementing performance improvements to make Firefox the best browser at running complex Web 2.0 applications such as Yahoo’s Zimbra online collaboration suite.

Mozilla has dealt with over 400 performance-related bugs and changes, to produce the latest version.

Modifications include optimisation of JPG encoding, new graphics- and text-rendering architectures in the browser’s Gecko engine, and a completely re-designed JavaScript engine.

Mozilla also wanted to improve Firefox’s performance in preparation for a possible expansion into the mobile market.

Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 can be downloaded from Mozilla’s site for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is available in 36 languages.

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