We have been pretty critical of Firefox lately, which has to do with the fact that the current Firefox, stable and beta, simply do not have the kind of excitement and innovation we would expect from a software that wants to challenge Microsoft and has to defend itself against a fast-paced Google. However, it appears that Mozilla has found its wow at last: Tab Candy has made its way into the nightly builds of Firefox and is maturing quickly. Add the new JavaScript engine JaegerMonkey (JM) to the bottom line and Firefox may soon be much more attractive than it is today.

Firefox 3.6 isn’t a terrible browser. We prefer it over IE8 any day. But Mozilla may not have seen the train that was coming from Google and Opera and Firefox just isn’t the best choice out there any more. Especially Chrome revolutionized the way how we use browsers and even Mozilla is following the interface layout trend that has been pioneered by Google. When Microsoft released its first IE9 Platform Preview, we got seriously concerned about Mozilla and even more when the first Firefox 4.0 Beta was released. It was better than Firefox 3.6, but not nearly as fast as IE9 PP, Opera, Safari and Chrome. Its interface was chromified and it lacked (and still lacks) identity. The roadmap was not exactly promising as Mozilla missed key milestones such as hardware acceleration for its new Firefox 4.0 Beta and there were no standout features that could have made the case for this new browser.

A few weeks ago, we got a first look at Tab Candy, a new way to browse through a certain set of websites. Tab Candy showed up in a test version of Firefox and was removed again soon theerafter, as it was very rough and clearly needed work. It is now back as part of the nightly builds of Firefox 4 Beta 4-pre and we have to admit that we are impressed. The feature set is still patchy and not entirely conclusive, but Mozilla has flushed out some of the graphics and Tab Candy seems to be well on track to debut with Firefox 4.0.

In a Nutshell

Tab Candy is a new shot at managing many tabs at once. If you are among those users who like to open many more tabs than your tab bar can handle and you end up scrolling through tabs, then Tab Candy can help. You can organize tabs into groups that can be defined by name and content. Simply drag and drop related pages into the same group window or create a new window by dragging a window into an open space and another window on top of it. The Tab Candy feature can be accessed by clicking on the window icon to the right of the URL bar in Firefox.

When you use the Tab candy page as your start page, which you may actually get used to, you can simply click on a window in one group and a browser window opens that shows only the tabs in that group. If you close the browser window, you return to the Tab Candy page. Open a new tab in the browser window and it is automatically added to the Tab Candy page.

The feature is not perfect yet as the display shows some ugly overlaps of text and window previews. But Mozilla is showing continued improvements: For example, it is now possible to perfectly align groups with the help of magnetic guidelines. If Mozilla gets this one right, it could reshape the way we are browsing a standard set of websites and the way bookmarks are handled. There are countless ways to enhance this feature, for example with an independent search across tabs and notifications if content has changed in tabs – which could be very useful if you are keeping track multiple email accounts in Tab Candy. Conceivably, this is the first feature in a long time we could imagine setting a trend not only for Firefox, but the entire browsers industry.

IE9: Unlock The Native Web

When released, Firefox will be compared against IE9. In terms of performance and appearance, the two are closest, while Chrome and Opera are playing in a different league right now and appeal to different user groups. Microsoft considered Firefox a done deal not too long ago and heavily promotes IE9’s hardware-acceleration of HTML 5 content as well as JavaScript acceleration as the browser’s main new features. IE9 Beta will be released on September 15. In about the same time frame, we expect the Firefox 4 Beta to be available in the feature-complete release 5. If everything goes according to plan, Firefox 4 Beta 5 will integrate Tab Candy, hardware acceleration as well as the new JM JavaScript engine.

Just a few weeks ago, IE9 appeared to overrun Firefox in new features as well as performance. Right now, it isn’t such a slam dunk for Microsoft anymore. Firefox will get hardware acceleration as well, which is, however, rather useless as there aren’t many websites that take advantage of this feature. JM is catching up in performance quickly: According to the JM developer team, the JM engine finishes the Sunspider test in about 525 ms, which is not quite as good as the 460 ms that IE9 PP4 achieved on our system, but it is a huge improvement over the 589 ms of the TraceMonkey (TM) engine in the current Firefox 4 Beta 4-pre and the 890 ms that is posted by TM in Firefox 3.6.8. JM is still in development and appears to be gaining speed every day: Mozilla’s goal is to end up within 20% of Chrome 5 performance, which is about 350 ms and would put JM into a range of about 420 ms. As far as JavaScript performance is concerned, Firefox 4 may be just as fast as the first IE9 Beta, or come out slightly ahead.

In the end, Tab Candy may be huge deal for Mozilla – it may turn out to be a key differentiator to IE9 and Chrome. Microsoft can only play the hardware acceleration part as IE9’s apparent advantage and will pitch the story as its way to “unlock the native web”. That, however, can only be the case when those websites that cater to GPU acceleration support will emerge and that simply has not been the case yet.

Also, Microsoft seems to be creating a smoke screen around HTML 5: IE9 has still some substantial gaps in HTML 5 and does not support, for example, the critical canvas element yet. According to Caniuse.com, IE9 only supports 81% of HTML 5 requirements, while Chrome is at 88%, Firefox at 96%, Safari at 88% and Opera at 77%. IE9 PP4 scores only 85 of a possible 300 points in HTML5test.com, which is better than the 27 points of IE8, but behind the current Chrome 6 Beta which hits 227 points, behind Opera 10.61 with 166 points, and Firefox 4 Beta 4-pre with 199 points.

It all appears to be ending up in a small déjà vu for Microsoft. When it released the first beta of IE8, it appeared that IE could be surpassing Firefox in performance. It did not happen and it may not happen this time around either.

Once again, it appears that Mozilla has found its strength again. Sometimes the obvious and simple features are the ones that may work out the best. With JM, Tab Candy and hardware acceleration, Firefox remains one of the best browser choices you can make.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.