[ShadowAce]

[HerbieHoover]

The last version of Firefox for Android was disappointing; I’ll see if this one is any better.

[cripplecreek]

I’ve been a whole lot happier since switching from IE.

The first step was admitting that I had a problem.

[KarlInOhio]

Both Firefox 5 and 6 are part of Mozilla's new rapid release cycle, which aims to deliver more browser updates with incremental features.

If they have "incremental features" then why jump whole version numbers? I'm still running Firefox 3.6 so I've missed two "major" versions already.

[Tainan]

Did the FF 6 update this afternoon...works very well...so far. I do seem to note an increase in program response.
Mozilla also did an update on Thunderbird, their email client. It is also at 6.0 now.

[yuleeyahoo]

Opera 11.5!

[yuleeyahoo]

Opera 11.5!

[mikrofon]

It seems like just yesterday that they were stuck on 3.xx

[TomGuy]

Mozilla is getting ridiculous with their rapid releases.

I just upgraded to 5 (bypassing 4 altogether) a few weeks ago.

I looked on their website, but could not find a definitive list of improvements/changes for 6. Is it worth the effort? One earlier review (from a year or so ago) indicated that 6 would be only minor improvements with 7 being some significant improvements.

I lost a few extensions/add-ons when I upgraded from 3.6 to 5. How many might I lose upgrading to 6? I don’t know — I may not bother to find out, unless I can find a good description of what is new/better in 6.

[gunnyg]

I never trusted Gill Bates and Gal Dore!

I do have IE on my PCs; but I don’t use it, mainly because so many pseudo-aMericans insist bad things will happen if I attempt to remove it...?????

[Bookwoman]

I’ve had nothing but trouble with FF5 - it would hang. Will 6 make it better or worse? I had to switch to IE and believe me, I want OUT. I have a new machine with 12 gigs of RAM, quad processors, and Win7 Professional.

[DesertSapper]

FF3.6.x is stable for me but lacks many features.
FF4 was really bad as it would freeze up repeatedly and took 3 times as long to launch as Chrome5 and IE9.
FF5 seemed to resolve those problems as I didn't have problems with it - but it still didn't give me anything useful I didn't already have with IE9 and C5.

I just installed FF6 and it locked up on FR ... not the best first impression but I'll give it a week and decide if it makes my primary or alternate browser (currently IE9[32bit] and FF5 (because my work apps function better on FF5 than Chrome).

[Dead Corpse]

Do I have to download everything all over again? All my add-ons? Personalities? Etc???

Kinda sucks, even if the improvements are actually improving things...

[N. Theknow]

Hope it fixes whatever happened on Monday that screwed up Firefox royally.

Some sort of update was installed, thinking it was for Windows & and Firefox has been upgephuqued ever since.

[zeugma]

I’m a long time firefox user. I believe it was called Phoenix back then at version.2. If they were using the same numbering convention then as they are now, we’d be at version 452 now. This is redicuous. These are point releases not major versions. Major versions should only happen with significant API changes.

[zeugma]

For Linux users, if you'd like to try out the new version without losing your old one, you might be interested in how I deal with browser upgrades. It looks complex, but is actually not as bad as it looks.

1. Download the new version
2. From your home directory. Back up your existing .mozilla directory:
   tar czvf mozilla.20110817.tgz .mozilla
3. Untar the new Firefox:
   tar xjvf firefox.blah.bz
4. Move the firefox directory you just extracted to /usr/local with a version-stamped name:
   sudo mv firefox /usr/local/firefox-6.0
5. Change the ownership to root (this is necessary for security):
   sudo chown root:root /usr/local/firefox-6.0
   
6. Create symlink for what will be your new execution directory:
   sudo ln -s /usr/local/firefox-6.0 /usr/local/firefox
7. Edit the script that calls firefox. You'll need to change where it says firefox lives. Most likely it will be something like "/usr/lib/firefox-5" or something similar. You'll want to change it to /usr/local/firefox. Note that in the following command, the quotes are backticks, not quotation marks.
   sudo vi  `which firefox`
   
8. You should be good to go,

Yeah, sounds like a lot of crap, but the benefit is, that if you've been running with this setup for a while and a new version comes out, say Firefox 7. All you'd do is extract the package to /usr/local/firefox-7, delete the symlink to /usr/local/firefox, create a new one pointing to the new directory and you're ready to go. If you find it is not to your liking, to revert back to previous version, just remove your symlink, and create new one pointing to the directory version you want. I normally keep 3 versions on my box.  Disk space is cheap, and newer versions aren't necessarily better.

Also, with the backup of your .mozilla directory, if the new version borks your profile (this has happened in the past), you can just wipe out your existing .mozilla directory and extract your saved version. I recommend you back this up at least once a week. I have a cron job that does this for me.

[martin_fierro]

Does anyone who uses the Xmarks bookmark synchronizer (on Windows 7, Mac and Linux machines, and between MSIE, FF and Safari) encounter problems with it messing up your bookmarks?

Does Firefox's own Bookmark Sync work better?

[Mozilla]

I’m still on Firefox 3.6.3 as one of the 4.0 version kept crashing. With this rapid release cycle, I never upgraded to 5. I’ll try 6 after I read more reviews.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Mozilla is really starting to annoy me with these rapid releases. About half my browser add-ons are non-functional, again. Thankfully the privacy add-ons still work, but now one of my security tabs is out of commission.

Downloaded Chrome a couple weeks ago and liked it quite a bit.

[catnipman]

So, has any of the releases of FF stopped the memory leaks that bloat FF to a gig of RAM after a few clicks along with periodic 100% CPU grabs?

Oh, silly me. That’s right. It’s Flash that does that or Addons. Or something. Anything that’s not FF’s fault. The Mozilla project is starting to become the Obama of software development.

BTW, I love FF for what it should do, but hate if for what it actually does do.