There hasn’t been a great deal of fanfare about it but Mozilla have rolled out the latest Alpha version of their continuing browser project codenamed Minefield. Minefield is actually just the branding given to trunk builds (basically test versions) of Firefox but initial impressions are that it’s very fast – possibly more so than Google Chrome.
My experience and that of most other users is that it’s definitely quicker than Firefox 3 when loading pages. Compared to Chrome however there’s less difference but I’d say that it’s also a bit quicker. Most estimates are putting it at 10% quicker than Chrome which isn’t spectacular but better than nothing. I’d say the figure is closer to 20% when comparing it with Firefox 3. The key seems to be that Minefield employs a revised engine which loads clunky JavaScript in lightening quick time. Unfortunately however, it’s also prone to very frequent crashes and it doesn’t like Flash sites one bit. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve got lots of RAM because it leaks memory like a bucket with holes in.
Minefield looks and feels exactly like Firefox 3 so you won’t notice any differences there. Be warned though that although it’s a separate installation to Firefox, it will use the same profile as you use in Firefox. Many extensions won’t work on it either (though you can get round this by using the Nightly extension).
If you want to try it out for yourself, then sign up to become a Minefield tester. You can download the latest Alpha versions of Minefield here.
