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Download Firefox 9 Final

By Vygantas | December 17, 2011 | 67 Comments

Download Firefox 9 Final After new Google Chrome and Opera releases, Mozilla has also something up its sleeve: a final version of Firefox 9.

Although it’s not yet publicly announced and can’t be downloaded from the “official” site, some users have managed to find Firefox 9 in the official Mozilla Nightly servers and that’s exactly where you can download it.

So what’s new? There are actually a few neat things, from improved web standards support to stability fixes, but the most important one is the Type Inference, which drastically improves JavaScript performance.

How much? While we wait for the final build benchmarks, you check the following graph from our previous post to see what you can expect:

Firefox 9 Release Date, JM And Type Inference Engine Numbers

Firefox 9 Final Changelog

Added Type Inference, significantly improving JavaScript performance
Improved theme integration for Mac OS X Lion
Added two finger swipe navigation for Mac OS X Lion
Added support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript
Added support for font-stretch
Improved support for text-overflow
Improved standards support for HTML5, MathML, and CSS
Fixed several stability issues

Download Firefox 9 Final

We will update download links upon official release.

About (Author Profile)

Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Przemysław Lib

Can’t wait for some broad benchmark (tom’s hardware, maybe you??).

Typed Interface should improve much FF “karma”. There where series of posts focusing on bad sides of FF recently (Chrome is faster, Opera have mail client, IE10 have metro, FF8 did not bring much changes, Chrome surpassed FF, etc…)
While FF show with 9 that its still alive and kicking :)

Also TI is something others do not have (they can have it if they want, so it will improve perf of JS in everyone’s browser when they will implement it!), so Mozilla still can be on the edge (though TI is already used in others dynamic languages like Python).
- Sarjoor
  
  You’re kidding right? Type Inference was in the original V8 when Google released it in Sep. 2008. Why do you think FF has it now? They’ve been studying V8 since Sep. 2008. They’ve just finally finished coding and debugging now to release it.
- Sarjoor
  
  Hmm…. maybe I was wrong about that. Google has had Type Inference since Dec. 2010 when they released Crankshaft update to V8. See:
  http://blog.chromium.org/2010/12/new-crankshaft-for-v8.html
  
  Even Mozilla’s David Mandelin says so: http://blog.mozilla.com/dmandelin/2009/06/
  
  So Mozilla’s been copying V8′s Type Inference since Dec. 2010.
  - Przemysław Lib
    
    ohhh thx!
  - Sarjoor
    
    Oops… another mistake by me… corrected weblink to David Mandelin’s review of Google’s Crankshaft update:
    http://blog.mozilla.com/dmandelin/2010/12/08/crankshaft/
Whyamiusingthis

More like version 8.0.1. Why version changes so fast?
- Saex Conroy
  
  just for the record. 8.0.1 is already out, and it makes me happy if the version numbering frustrates you
  - Frankly
    
    Doesn’t it frustrate you to be just another idiotic Firefox fanboy troll?
    - Przemysław Lib
      
      Oh come one, whats wrong with stupid answers to stupid questions.
      
      If Why…. want to know WHY, then there are plenty of resources on the web already. GOOGLE do not bite :P
    - Saex Conroy
      
      im not a fanboy, i use what suits my needs best, its sad, because people like you, have no social life and their perception is so limited they feel free to judge anybody exist.. you should be put away from other humans
      - Frankly
        
        Ok, you’re an aggressive sarcastic full of venom little piece of a lamebrain troll, posting comments that he considers (totally unreasonably) “witty”, having no notion about neither punctuation nor grammar, judging about other people having “no social life” while spending Saturday on the Internet by himself at the same time…
        And after that My Perception is “limited” and I Am the one who’s “antisocial” ?
        Lol
        Your logical path is impressive. What grade are you in, the 2nd?
      - Saex Conroy
        
        actually the 1st… of university .. joke’s on you grammar boy
        
        i dont need to use proper grammar or punctuation to write to a spineless rat like you (only when you earn my respect, and that wont happen even if you kiss my ass publicly)
        
        when im writing my CV, i will use proper punctuation, now go be smart somewhere else
      - Frankly
        
        The 1st? “Of university”? Then I’m really sorry… for your university professors, for they’ll have to deal with your “remarkable” intelligence and “staggering” personality for a long period of time yet… Poor guys.
        
        And, man, your very conception of “humor” needs to be reviewed. So far, you look pathetic trying to “crack ones”.
        
        By the way, your manner of arguing ad hominem is an evident sign of insecurity. (You might want to look up “ad hominem” now)
        
        And no, I don’t practice homosexual displays of affection. Thanks for giving me a hint of what your personal experience is based upon though.
        
        Now let’s wait and see how much more pathetic can you get.
      - Saex Conroy
        
        whatever happens on the internet, stays there, im not the one being pathetic, youre the one who started namecalling, you sound like a very confident person.. ON THE INTERNET, you sure have luck for living far away from me, because people who talk shit in my face get served right away
        
        i suggest you shut the fuck up and go jerk off on some javascript screenshots and never come back
        
        cuz if ure trying to sound like a sociologist .. ure far from the truth
      - Frankly
        
        OMG… “A sociologist”… Is that the farthest you can come in using your chimpanzee-sized brain?
        
        And, yeah, you just scared the hell out of me. The fact is that you’re just a blockhead freaking out everytime anyone uses a term that’s beyond the narrowed boundaries of your extremely limited lowbrow vocabulary.
        
        No wonder you resort to violence. That’s the only way a Neanderthal like you can prove his case. And all above-mentioned just cries out at the top of it’s hypothetical lungs about your inferiority complex.
        
        But, still, I am truly interested in dissecting your personality, as an ethologist would be interested in a monkey’s behaviour. And you just keep giving me new material, you relentless imbecile.
        
        Keep on. ;)
      - Apriorimeister
        
        Beautiful.
      - Anonymous
        
        I find it funny how YOU set yourself double standards.
        
        You argue he is using aggressive words.
        
        You on the other hand is the little “angel” that can do no wrong.
        
        YOU began this by calling him a troll.
        
        YOU are the true troll.
      - Ryan
        
        I really wish these people would find a different site to insult each other. Its stupid how easy some of you get defensive over some browsers but yet eventually are arguing about each other. Please shut up!
    - Josh
      
      Frankly you’re the troll. Go peep some leaves, weirdo.
      - Frankly
        
        And “The Ass-Kisser of the Month” goes to…. Josh! To this committed lucky sonuvabitch! Congratulations! *Storm of applause*
      - Mikah
        
        Never pretty watching a couple of trolls fighting the idiots both think they can win, instead they both become locked into a loop.
FxOp

Cant believe Firefox 9 beats Opera 11.60 in sunspider tests in my system

The 337.2 score is FireFox 9 while 382.2 is Opera 11.60

the tests done is on DEFAULT installation(means no extensions,other customizations on the 2 browsers involved)

I thought opera is faster..looks like opera is just deceiving their users that their browser is faster than Fx and GC…
- FxOp
  
  dammit forgot link
  
  http://i.imgur.com/MY08p.jpg
  - Dante
    
    Try Peacekeeper test: http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/
    - Dante
      
      Peacekeeper complex test results: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/577/34686814.jpg/
      Browsers: Firefox 9, Opera 11.60 – 12.00, Chrome 17, Internet Explorer 9
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        You know that you could just provide us with permalink to test results???
- Saex Conroy
  
  http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/3002/sfhdfher.png Firefox 8.0.1
  i will upload a new one for Firefox 9
- Mikah
  
  Can’t believe anybody thinks Sunspider scores are important any more.
  Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler posted last year
  “Sunspider was designed before any of the browsers had these truly modern JS engines with just in time compilers and because of that and all the progress each browser vendor has made over the last several years Sunspider is no longer particularly useful as a JS benchmark. This is kind of obvious when you see that all of the top scores are pretty much tied. One one hundredth of a second (across 26 tests) separates the slow from the fast and that’s just not particularly meaningful.”
  http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2010/10/some_sunspider_numbe.html
  - Anonymous
    
    Mozilla says a lot of things
    - Przemysław Lib
      
      This time Mozilla is on Google, MS, etc. side. Thats why they have their own test suites (and also to highlight best of their own browsers).
      - Anonymous
        
        Sun spider is a de-facto test. Everybody uses it when a browser benchmark comes to mind (even though it is testing one aspect of the browser). Mozilla have lately been having a beef with this tests that article etc. etc. Makes them look pathetic
        I have said a long time ago when Opera and chrome were doing all this sunspider test stuff that I wanted to see this stop and improve on other aspects of their respective browser.Sadly this artificial increase in speed is un-noticeable to the end user.What is noticeable is when you hit enter and the page loads slow or not.
      - Anonymous
        
        And there goes all my line breaks.
        
        Arghhh.
        
        Maybe we should move to livefyre
      - Mikah
        
        Probably the only reason its still used a lot is because its so quick to complete.
        Copied this from
        http://www.webkit.org/blog/152/announcing-sunspider-09/
        “December 19th, 2007 at 6:02 am Windows XP SP2, AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.1Ghz), 1 GB RAM13525.8ms +/- 3.4% – Opera 9.50 latest internal build16442.6ms +/- 0.7% – Safari 3.0.4 (523.13)19683.4ms +/- 0.9% – Firefox 3 beta 126424.4ms +/- 23.8% – Firefox 3 beta 232672.4ms +/- 1.0% – Firefox 2.0.1182053.8ms +/- 3.9% – IE 7″
        
        Only 4 years ago Opera took 13.5 seconds & IE 7 82 seconds.
        Today on my PC IE9 takes 132ms & the slowest browser was Firefox Nightly 11 only 189ms,
        
        Is it still useful for modern PC’s running modern fast browsers ? I say no.
        Mobile Phones & Tablets Yes.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        Sun spider is too old.
        
        It do not reflect complexities of modern JS heavy sites (and there are a lot of them!).
        
        And it fails to distinguish fast/slow. Its simply tooooo short.
        
        That’s one reason why other (Kraken, V8) are better, but also others are based on real code (purified to get JS perf, but still real code).
        
        Do not get me wrong, but claims that browsers do not need fast JS are silly…
        Even this comment system use JS heavily.
      - Anonymous
        
        V8 is too biased towards Chrome.
        
        What sunspider does is act like a reference point to see how well browser performance have improved over time.
        
        As it is very old,
        It is a great standard to measure growth with.
        
        And no. Browsers do not need any more optimizations for JS. it is good enough. What is needed is for people to use good machines instead of 10 year crap.
        
        Who cares if one browser spent 20ms while an other spent 25ms. Humans cannot perceive the difference.
        
        The overall experience of a page load is much much more important.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        Its you who are being biased. Really complex web apps need as much JS perf, as they can get out of the browser!
        
        And I mean apps! Not just comment systems, etc.
        
        This lead us to the conclusion that we need complex benchmarks, not only measuring many single features, but also complex algorithms which are on the “egde” of what is possible, since web is not set in stone. Its expanding, and more and more things can be handled in web!
        
        For example editing photography, can be too much for current JS!
        
        And do not forget that web is for everyone poor, or rich. Stationary or mobile. Inter or ARM or whatever ….
        
        V8 is biased toward Chrome, Kraken was biased toward FF. MS do not have JS test of its own (pity!!).
        So if you put them together you can measure how much progress is been made!
        
        Last but not least Sun Spieder now have too small resolution. Even large advancement is translated into small improvement of score.
      - Anonymous
        
        I am being biased towards what excatly?
        
        There is nothing wrong.
        
        In this day and age we do not need 1ms javascript engines.
        
        Why would I use picnik to edit photography?
        
        Why are you stating that Sunspider is not valid anymore? What is your beef? If you have a personal vandetta go elsewhere.
        
        It is a perfectly valid test.
        
        And Kraken is not biased to firefox. You are just saying that because mozilla made it.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        ”Why would I use picnik to edit photography?”
        
        Prime example of being biased. Its not bad thing. Its just you do not need web to fulfil roles of “desktop/classic” apps.
        
        And obvious reason why you may want to have online picture editor it that it can improve work-flow (like you uploaded pic to social network website, and then realise you need to change it a bit).
        Additionally you get unified UI on all platforms.
      - Anonymous
        
        You are thinking tooooooo far into the future. FULLSTOP.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        You ignore already JS havy solutions out there.
        FULLSTOP
      - Anonymous
        
        Oy
        
        Vey!
- johnnysaucepn
  
  Firstly, there will always been variances on performance between different machines. Secondly, there are many more factors that go into performance than raw JS – notice that those Sunspider tests you quote are all about raw calculation speed, there is also page load times and DOM rendering to consider. Your browser will spend much more time doing the latter two than the first.
  - Przemysław Lib
    
    You assume that JS will be used only for simple-to-mild-complex web pages.
    
    There is a lot more for complex webpages (like handling networking), and REAL web apps will be mostly about computation.
    
    Like games (both 2D and 3D), business apps, etc.
    
    All valid reasons to have fastest JS engine possible.
    - Anonymous
      
      You are living too far into the future.
      
      The stuff you speak about is not going to go mainstream till years later.
      
      It is nice to dream but please be realistic.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        Haha!
        Google know how to travel in time!!
        They use WebGL in their maps.
        
        Aviary is from future (online photo editor)…
        
        All those HTML5 games are from the future…..
        
        Why do you claim that those uses are not possible yet?
        For sure there are companies ready to exploit those opportunities.
      - Anonymous
        
        Those are all experiments.
        
        They are not considered the norm.
        
        You should know that everything bleeding edge is necessary the best.
        
        You might get new features but you need to ask yourself if it’s practical? Does it need refinement? How much would it cost to deploy? Would it be harder to learn.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        Yeah! They have to be experiments (chrome marketplace is full of experiments-only apps ;) ), otherwise arm-race in JS engine space would be something good, and its not!!
  - Anonymous
    
    Perfect.
Guesty Guest

It’s Type Inference not Type Interface.

FF9 does bring changes, but most of them are under the hood and not things that the user can actually see on the UI. They are aimed at speed, responsiveness, memory management, stability etc.

It makes me smile when you see people complaining about the lack of new features. They’re also the same people that complain about the new UI on Firefox and how they don’t like it. The new, fully customizable UI that now hasn’t changed for 9 months.

I’d like to see Tom’s Hardware do another web browser grand prix with Chrome 16, Firefox 9, Opera 11.60, IE9 and the latest development version of IE10.
- Przemysław Lib
  
  No…
  
  IE10 is browser in development while others are final(stable).
  
  Do not mix them!
  
  Having said that, I also look to some extensive comparison!
- Sarjoor
  
  Hi V….. yes, please fix the typo, should be:
  Type Inference
  - http://www.favbrowser.com FavBrowser.com
    
    Fixed, sorry guys.
- http://www.favbrowser.com FavBrowser.com
  
  I’d love to test IE10 as well but it won’t run on Windows 7.
  - Guesty Guest
    
    That’s news to me. So what you’re saying is that Microsfot have done what they did with IE9 ( not mkaing it available on Windows XP) to IE10, but this time it can only run on WIndows 8 or higher?
    
    If this is true then MS are stupid. Loads of people on Windows 7 won’t be rushing to upgradfe 5 to Windows 8 and that means that Chrome and Firefox are then the opnly truly modern browsers that will run on the OS with the biggest market share in the world.
    
    Microsoft keep shooting themselves in the foot.
    - Guesty Guest
      
      Sorry typing too fast as I am in a rush.
    - Przemysław Lib
      
      No and Yes!
      
      IE10 “classic” will run on Win7 just fine! (however MS will probably patch Win7 for that).
      IE10 “metro” simply wont.
      
      However as for now IE10 PP are for Win8 only. (IE10 Beta should be for Win7 again)
  - Scorpion3003
    
    IE10 will only run win8 for now, IE10 Beta/RC/Final will run on Win 7. once IE10 reaches the beta stage.
    - Scorpion3003
      
      I meant IE10 will only run for Windows 8
Guest Nameles

I think that Windows is stalling other browsers, on Centos with FF 3.6 works just fine as FF 9 on Windows, forget benchmarks just browsing and how fast page opens.
- Przemysław Lib
  
  Do you have up to date Windows (and drivers) ?. FF is quite even on both platforms. There should not be so much difference.
- Anonymous
  
  Unlikely. This isn’t Nvidia we are talking about. Although they did some bad stuff in the old days.
- http://hector-macias.blogspot.com Hector Macias Ayala
  
  Whats stalling? are you speaking english?
greenbutter

when will mozilla announce the date for ff9 release?
in 2012, are we going to get to firefox 20?
- Przemysław Lib
  
  AS USUALLY, binaries for firefox land on official ftp’s BEFORE official release!
  AS USUALLY Mozilla ask news reporting site, to NOT use it as pretext to announce official FF release (and author of news marked it!!).
  
  And for the 3rd time:
  AS USUALLY, Mozilla publicize release dates for releasing FF on their Wiki (20th* December).
  
  Go learn how to use Google ;)
  
  * there may be some last minute bugfixes, update infrastructure problems, etc. Thats why Mozilla give itself few days of spare time.
  
  ** I assume that you have already voted against upgrading to newer FF, in the past so you need to update it manually, since others will get it without ANY problem, just by turning on their browsers.
  - Josh
    
    Grammar Nazi incoming: It should be “as usual,” not “as usually.”
    - Mikah
      
      Alternately just omit As.
      - Przemysław Lib
        
        Thx!

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