Mozilla Releases Firefox 58 for Mac With Performance Optimizations

Mozilla today announced the launch of Firefox 58, building upon the new "Quantum" features that were introduced in Firefox 57 back in November.

Firefox 57 introduced a redesigned interface, new UI features, speeds twice as fast as Firefox 52, and an engine that uses 30 percent less memory than Google Chrome, and Mozilla is continuing to introduce additional improvements in Firefox 58.

Firefox 58 includes updates to Gecko, Firefox's rendering engine, which are designed to streamline and speed up the browsing experience. Specific new additions include background tab throttling, a WebAssembly Streaming Compiler, and Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP) for a "significantly better" rendering process, with full details on the speed improvements available on the Firefox blog.

Improvements have also been made to the way CSS fonts are displayed for shorter loading times, there's a new Promise feature to reduce redundant code, and functional and privacy improvements have been made to Firefox Screenshots. Full release notes for the update are available from the Firefox website.

With this release, we're building on the great foundation provided by our all-new Firefox Quantum browser. We're optimizing the performance gains we released in 57 by improving the way we render graphics and cache JavaScript. We also made functional and privacy improvements to Firefox Screenshots. On Firefox for Android, we've added support for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) so you can add websites to your home screen and use them like native apps.

Existing Firefox users will be able to upgrade to Firefox 58 automatically by restarting the browser. Non-Firefox users can download Firefox 58 for macOS for free from the Mozilla website.

Tag: Firefox

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

casperes1996

23 months ago

True. But Chrome damage is not that severe and easily noticeable as with the new Firefox. Yes you can see the usage in Activity monitor, but it won't start up your CPU's fans on some random WordPress blog.

That depends on the page. I've had Chrome kick off the fans to what I'd call pretty high RPMs, when Safari wouldn't even take them past their idle speeds. Regardless, I don't like Chrome at all. Firefox is much nicer, and Safari is king of the hill (in my opinion). Mostly has to do with the UI for me, and how they render the pages in their windows.

Rating: 7 Votes

C DM

23 months ago

58. Enough said.

Seems like that didn't really say anything.

Rating: 7 Votes

djgamble

23 months ago

Firefox is seriously one of the few apps that I find truely amazing. It has suvived attacks from Microsoft and Google and really only exists because it’s a frigging good browser.

Oh and it respects your frigging privacy, what an idea!

Netscape FOREVER!!!

Rating: 3 Votes

NY Guitarist

23 months ago

I use Firefox and enjoy the many add-ons the tailor it to my meeds.

I HATE the new UI though :(

Rating: 3 Votes

mileusna

23 months ago

It still use too much resources on MacBooks (CPU i.e. battery) for simple page rendering. Bugs are opened on Bugzilla but it looks to me there is no significant progress with the new version. So next time when you hear the fans on your MacBook Pro, it is time to close the Firefox and cool off your CPU.

P.S. I'm fan of Firefox from early days, even developed some popular Firefox extensions, and I really want it to succeed, but it will drain MB battery quickly.

Rating: 2 Votes

MacGizmo

23 months ago

Still loads everything you throw at it. Still loads everything quickly. Still looks like complete and absolute garbage. Can Mozilla not find a single contributor with GUI experience that has even trace amounts of visual taste?

Rating: 2 Votes

Smoothie

23 months ago

I've used Firefox for years. It's my favorite browser by far. I especially like its bookmark management compared to other browsers. I've never had it ramp up the fan on my MBP or any other laptop I've owned. The only time I use Safari is to watch Apple's online events. I'm very happy it's still being supported and improved.

Rating: 1 Votes

adamjackson

23 months ago

I had not opened FireFox in years so instead of downloading it from their site, I opened it and went to the preferences and clicked "update" which triggered an update and refresh button in the main window

It restarted and then I had to go to the about screen and subsequently went through 3 updating and restart cycles before finally "you're on the latest version" and for real this time because after every relaunch, the launch page on the FF website said "you're on the latest version" while the about screen was downloading yet another update.

After 10 minutes of this and 250 megabytes of downloads across 4 different versions, I really should have just downloaded the latest from FF's website and replaced the current app.

What an odd update situation. why wouldn't the browser just query what the latest is and update that?

Rating: 1 Votes

mpainesyd

20 months ago

OK - tried it on another Mac and got the same warning. I suspect the infection is in an add-on. I started Firefox and went to preferences to disable auto-updates (of Firefox and add-ons) but by the time I did this the add-ons were updating and one of them evidently had the Trojan. It was probably a Flash downloader add-on.

Rating: 1 Votes