Firefox G5 / Intel optimized builds available

✎ Published: 2008-06-23 10:30:30

Optimized builds of Firefox, now called Minefield for G5 and Intel processors, have been released with Firefox 3. These builds enhance performance by leveraging architecture-specific features, resulting in improved startup and scrolling speeds. The new releases also feature a customized MacOSXified icon that integrates better with the system aesthetics.

Firefox G5 / Intel optimized builds available

We wrote about CPU architecture optimized Firefox builds before. Now with the advent of Firefox 3, new builds of Firefox for G5 and Intel processors arrived (due to legal issues they're not called Firefox but Minefield though).

Normaly software is build so it runs on all kinds of different processors, so speed / memory footprint is, in a way, the lowest common detominator (keep in mind that I'm oversimplifying things here, to explain the benefits of optimized builds). However, if a software is optimized for just one archicture, one can throw in all kinds of extra features, that architecture has to offer (like for example SSE or MMX). This, of course, enhances the speed of the whole software.

So without further ado, here you can find the optimized Firefox (erm Minefield) builds. My first tests showed a strong enhancement in startup and scrolling speed.

Oh and btw. these builds use the beautiful MacOSXified Firefox-Icon from Adam Betts which I've been used myself for years by manually applying it to Firefox after installing. This icon fits into OSX way better than the original Firefox-Icon (imho, that is).