Mozilla is using you to make Firefox 4 start faster

[dopelungreen]

Firefox 4 is nearly done and one of the first things that most users are likely to notice occurs right at the start-up.

Firefox 4 starts faster than any previous version of Firefox.

I recently visited Mozilla's Toronto office and got some really great insight into how Mozilla was able to speed up the Firefox start-up.

"You know how every day Firefox pings to get a list of blocked add-ons for security, what we send in that ping now is one number and that number is, how long did it take you to start-up this morning," Mike Beltzner Director of Firefox told me. "So we're getting live start-up data from the field."

Beltzner noted that the variability different platforms is incredible and Mozilla can't have every possible hardware and software combination on their own. By having the startup information, Mozilla developers are able to see if the changes being made in Firefox 4 are actually making things faster.

Mozilla is being very respectful of user privacy with this ping and are only collecting the startup speed number. The ping does not identify the OS, CPU, RAM or any other potentially identifying piece of information.

The fact that Mozilla is not tracking different hardware configurations is an interesting point on its own. Beltzner and Johnathan Nightingale (the 'other' Director of Firefox) told me that it doesn't matter since the overall sample size will take care of the stats.

"What we want to do is find out where the 90 percent is and make sure that for most users their is a decreasing arc for startup," Beltzner said.

[Zatarra]

Are multe asemanari cu crome-ul. Inca e beta dar se marita sa descarcati versiunea, e chiar super si se misca bine.

Mozilla rullz ;-)

[Guest Mosad]

Pe jaful meu se misca greu fata de 3.6.x .

[tiodr]

eu am 3.6.15 pe xp si se misca destul de bine..

[Andblood]

chrome rullz !