The bottom line: Firefox 14 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately for the 'fox, that describes most of its competition, too.
For those of you who spent last year away from the Internet, it's the year that Firefox went from annual major-point updates to a Chrome-style quick-release cycle. How quick? A new major version number along with a spate of performance and feature improvements lands in the Firefox stable version every six weeks. So, Firefox is on version 14 at the time of this review. As a point of comparison, Chrome is currently on version 20 even though it only launched in 2008.
To put it bluntly: Firefox has benefited from the rapid-release cycle. Both fixes and features get out to users faster than before, which puts a safer, sleeker browser in your hands with fewer overall problems. A vocal, minuscule minority has pooh-poohed the increase in version numbers, but that's hardly a legitimate complaint in a world where mobile apps also update silently and effectively.
0 comments:
Post a Comment