Every so often, I am surprised when a new version of software I use lands. Last Thursday, I received one such surprise in the form of Firefox 3.6. Normally I follow development news closely enough that it seems like release will never come; however this one slipped beneath my radar. When the browser notified me that the new version had landed, I had no choice but to immediately install it and begin geeking out over new features and performance improvements.
I was most pleased about the huge improvements in JS performance. This is particularly important at work, where I use an XP box that is decidedly less than cutting edge in terms of horsepower. Because I do most of my work in Firefox, improvements in speed are a boon to my productivity.
A comparison two runs through the Sun Spider test on my work PC are below (Spoiler alert: 173% improvement!):
Run 1 (FF 3.5) Run 2 (FF 3.6)
