Mozilla has made a few tweaks to the way Firefox loads web pages that should lead to a faster browsing experience in some circumstances.
Firefox 61 is out today and, among other things, it includes support for “retained display lists,” which will speed up the loading of websites you visit frequently, and “tab warming,” which will make the process of switching between browser tabs faster because Firefox starts loading a tab as soon as you hover your cursor over it.
Of course, that doesn’t help if you typically switch between tabs using keyboard shortcuts the way I do. But for mouse or stylus users, I suppose it could lead to a slight speed boost.
Other updates in Firefox 61 include:
- Better support for adding custom search engines
- WebExtension Tab Management, allowing extensions with tabs permissions to hide or restore tabs in the tab bar
- Accessibility Inspector that developers can use to help ensure sites support accessibility features
- Bookmark sync improvements
- Improved support for dark themes
Firefox 61 is available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux from the Mozilla website.
An updated version of Firefox for Android should is also available, and it should bring improved CSS rendering speed, faster scrolling, and improved security thanks to support for TLS 1.3, which is enabled by default.
It’s running like a slug on my PC for some reason.
It is running just fine on my computer — a 2009 or so Core 2 Duo equipped computer.