Bits from Bill

Technology thoughts leaking from the brain of "Bill Pytlovany"

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Firefox 3.5 Finally Gets Attention

Last month the Mozilla folks were celebrating the release of Firefox 3.5 but for some reason nobody noticed. Last summer the release of Firefox 3 set a Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in a 24 hour period.


Firefox 3.5


Even with over a weeks notice, downloads and enthusiasm for Firefox 3.5 just wasn’t the same. Maybe everyone was still tweeting about the election in Iran because the new release of Firefox certainly didn’t get the attention it deserved.


Yesterday Firefox 3.5 finally made it into the news and into the top tweets. Unfortunately, the news was a vulnerability was found in Firefox’s super fast JIT (Just-in-Time) JavaScript compiler


While some have recommend disabiling JavaScipt completely there is a solution that will temporarily disabled the JIT feature until Mozilla provides a patch.


According to the Mozilla Security Blog you just need to do the following…


  1. Enter about:config in the browser’s location bar.
  2. Type jit in the Filter box at the top of the config editor.
  3. Double-click the line containing javascript.options.jit.content setting the value to false.

You can watch for updates and check the Mozilla Blog at http://blog.mozilla.com to see when a fix is published. Once you receive the update, you’ll want to go back to the instructions above and set javascript.options.jit.content to True. That way you’ll still get the benefits of the faster JavaScript engine.

Update: A new version is now available to resolve this vulnerability. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html


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4 Comments:

Blogger nightsmusic said...

I downloaded Firefox 3.5 on Monday, installed it, and promptly uninstalled it within the hour. Apart from the fact that only two of my 17 add-ons work with 3.5 so far, it didn't load properly, didn't save my sessions, kept switching toolbars on me...no, thanks, I'll wait another month or two at least. As far as the JIT goes, I never had a chance to find out just how much faster it really is.

1:30 PM  
Blogger Don said...

I use very few add-ons, and the ones I do use work fine in 3.5. The new version seems to take longer to startup and I do not see any speed difference in using it.

5:07 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

BillP,

Just downloaded 3.5.1 Firefox upgrade. Does not appear when I selected check for upgrades, but is just available.

George


http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Mozilla-Firefox-v35-for-Windows/1032985422/7

4:06 PM  
Anonymous Sascha said...

I loadet Firefox 3.5 too and all i saved was off. i don't know why. I have waited 2 months and now i have the newer Firefox

4:11 AM  

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