Firefox 5 vs Firefox 6 | Firefox 5.0.1 vs 6.0

Mozilla has released Firefox 5 during June 2011, which was very soon followed by Firefox 6 beta release in July 2011. Mozilla released Firefox 6.0 beta version for beta channel users on 8th July 2011. The official release of Firefox 6.0 is on 16th August 2011. Following is a review on the features available in versions, their similarities and differences.

Mozilla Firefox 5

Mozilla Firefox was initially released to users on 21 June 2011. The latest released version is 5.0.1. Though, not packed with a bucket of new features, Firefox 5 has useful new features lined up.

Out of the many features of Firefox 5, the most important may be the support for CSS animations and the Do-Not-Track header preference. However, the CSS animation support must not have been complete, and might not work in all cases. The Do-Not-Track feature available with FF5 allows users to specify preferences not to be tracked by web sites who track user behavior for targeted Ad campaigns. When the advertising networks or web sites try to record such details Firefox will inform the relevant party that the user prefer to be not monitored. The Do-Not-Track will not block any advertisements from displaying; however sites may still display generic advertisements as they don’t have knowledge on the preferences of the user. The feature is available under the Privacy Tab of the browser.

The HTTP idle connection logic is enhanced in order to increase performance. However, when usual page load tests are done, the performance is only slightly better than the previous version of the browser. Improved JavaScript, memory and networking performance is another promised feature with Firefox 5. JavaScript performance has actually been improved, but only slightly than that of the previous version (Firefox 4). If users brows sites with heavy JavaScript, Firefox 5 is probably the best browser across many platforms.

Firefox 5 has also improved the standard support they have for HTML5, XHR (XmlHttpRequest), MathML, SMIL and Canvas. Firefox has improved well in comparison to the previous version in terms of HTML 5 and remains one of the best browsers for HTML 5 support.

In addition to the above, spell checking feature has been improved for some locales. Firefox 5 has also been better integrated for Linux environment. Several Stability issues and security issues has also been improved.

In Firefox 5, cross domain WebGL textures are disabled. As a result, some pages using cross domain WebGL textures will not work in Firefox 5. This was done in order to prevent cross domain information leakage.

Firefox 5 is compatible with Windows ( Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7), Linux (GTK+ 2.10, GLib 2.12 , Pango 1.14 , X.Org 1.0, libstdc++ 4.3) and Mac(Mac OS X 10.5 – 10.7) environments. 512 MB RAM and 200 MB hard disk space is also recommended.

Mozilla Firefox 6

Shortly after Firefox 5 is released, Mozilla released the Beta version of Firefox 6; the official release is schedules for 16 August 2011. Following is a brief review on Firefox 6.0.

Mainly UI changes are prominent in the Firefox 6. The address bar now highlights the domain name of the web site viewed by user. The site identity block is also streamlined properly to give a better look to it. Additionally a pop-up will be displayed requesting to remember password or to notify that the user is entering a secure connection.

Support for webSockets is available in Firefox 6 with a prefixed API. Due to security reasons Mozilla disabled webSocket support on Firefox 4, but has enabled support in Firefox 6. However, webSockets are not supported in Firefox 5. webSockets provide bi-directional, full duplex communication between web servers and web browsers. It is used to create chat applications and games in HTML5.

EventSource is a technology that allows longer lasting connections between web browsers and servers. Firefox 6 adds support for EventSource /server –sent events. Support has also been added to window.matchMedia as well.

Meanwhile, some interesting developer friendly upgrades are also available with Firefox 6.0. A new Developer menu item is added and all development related items are added under the Developer Menu. The usability of the web console is also improved. The console can be placed at the top of the window, bottom of the window as well as a separate window.

Firefox sync is what Firefox 4.0 and later versions use to synchronize bookmarks, preferences, passwords and etc. Up to 25 tabs opened across multiple devices can be synchronized using Firefox Sync. The discoverability of Firefox Sync is reportedly improved in Firefox 6.

Panorama view allows users to view all opened web pages across multiple tabs to be viewed in a single grid in a single page. The browser startup time is reduced when opening with Panorama view.

What is the difference between Mozilla Firefox 5 and 6?

Mozilla Firefox is one of the most famous browsers in the world today. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. Firefox 5 and 6 (Beta) were released within a period of one month. Therefore, include very few differences among them. The new features introduced with Firefox 5 such as Do-Not-Track header preference, improved support for CSS animations and superior HTML 5 support remains with Firefox 6 as well. Mozilla disabled support for webSockets in Firefox 4 and as a result Firefox 5 was also released with webSockets disabled. However, webSockets are enabled in Firefox 6. Eventsource is available with Firefox 6, but not available with Firefox 5. In Firefox 6 the address bar highlights the domain and the identity bar is enhanced for better appearance. In Firefox 6 developers will find all developer related items nicely organized under “Developer Menu”. The startup time in Panorama view is also improved in Firefox 6.

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