Firefox 6 is out

Firefox 6 is out.

Well, what’s new in this version?

• The address bar now highlights the domain of the website you’re visiting
• Streamlined the look of the site identity block
• Added support for the latest draft version of WebSockets with a prefixed API
• Added support for EventSource / server-sent events
• Added support for window.matchMedia
• Added Scratchpad, an interactive JavaScript prototyping environment
• Added a new Web Developer menu item and moved development-related items into it
• Improved usability of the Web Console
• Improved the discoverability of Firefox Sync
• Reduced browser startup time when using Panorama

Almost nothing noticeable, that’s what’s new. It highlights the domain in the address bar (which I have yet to see happening, and I just updated) and it’s definitely faster, though I haven’t used Firefox since since the beta version of 5.

Why am I so negative about it all? Well, Mozilla should have released this as a subversion. This should have been Firefox 4.6 or something. But no, they’re determined to copy Google and release major versions with little change.

It’s going to bring them a market advantage for a short time, that’s certain, major releases of Firefox always brought a rush of users, but people are starting to realize what Mozilla is up to.

I have to admit, Firefox does seem faster than Chrome right now, but I know they haven’t fixed the memory leaks or the cache problems yet, so I’m not switching. Oh and the complexity of setting up Sync isn’t fixed either.

What do you think of this new version? Have you updated yet?