Firefox 7 Released With Improved Memory Usage

Mozilla released Firefox 7 today that promises to deliver a faster web browsing experience largely thanks to a much improved memory management system. The browser has always been more of a hog in that aspect and slow to boot in comparison to rivals, but that's starting to change. This new release should be noticeably speedier in several areas, including startup time, tab opening, and HTML5 content.

Mozilla was able to reduce Firefox memory usage by as much as 50 percent, which results in faster performance and less chances of the browser crashing. This will be especially welcome to "heavy internet" users that open up a lot of tabs during long browsing sessions.

There are new tools that come with Firefox 7 that will allow developers to create snappier web experiences, including a new version of Canvas that speeds up HTML 5 animations and games. The browser also now supports the W3C navigation timing spec API so that developers can measure page load time and navigation against bandwidth speed, traffic and other factors.

Additionally, there is an opt-in Telemetry tool for users to provide anonymous browser performance data in a private and secure way to help improve future versions of Firefox.

[via Mozilla]