Swiftfox

[drhayden1]

http://www.getswiftfox.com/

anyone know of this or about this??

http://www.apcstart.com/site/amills/2006/09/1304/whats-the-worlds-fastest-browser

some info and etc. about swiftfox above

[bob3160]

Swiftfox is an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox for Linux.
It is compiled for AMD processors including Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Duron and Sempron.
But you probably already knew that from doing a quick Google search.

[DavidR]

It’s only available for Linux, but as Firefox is open source, there’s nothing stopping someone building a Swiftfox for Windows.

So for the moment it isn't something most of us can try.

[dk70]

There are several builds for Windows to try. One of the most popular is probably Stipe builds - if his version of 1.5.0.6 does not feel faster the rest wont either http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=347721&highlight=stipe

Most of them disable or dont include certain features, ie. DOM inspector for Stipe. That "Third Party/Unofficial Builds" will have all information.

I cant tell the difference and think main attraction is the building not use. Must be fun. Special builds but another reason they dont behave exactly like original Firefox is that of tweaking. Pipelining will be enable of course, the usual. Stipe is pretty conservative and dont use silly numbers. Try it out but use it on a clean profile so not to mess his tweaks up with old ones. You see his at bottom of firefox.js which is in defaults/pref folder.

[DavidR]

Yes looking at the figures the time savings (or speed) doesn't seem much certainly not enough to make a noticeable difference and not one to consider switching for.

(64-bit) 1.5.0.6 Firefox: 4.75 seconds
(32-bit) 1.5.0.6 Firefox: 4.79
(32-bit) 1.5.0.6 Swiftfox: 4.67

Well, Swiftfox is indeed faster — by about 1.7%. Not really that much to write home about, but your mileage may vary.

As you say it is probably the challenge of the special build that is attractive to the developer. My only concern with these special builds is security with the firefox core being update if a security flaw is found, there will be the obvious lag on these special builds. This is a greater concern as the highlighting of the flaw by patching it could draw attention to the flaw which would still be present in the special build code.

[dk70]

Could happen but most of the active builders can quickly throw out a new version. Some do it daily! Security is not really an issue but of course you cant be 100% sure what is added or not included. You can run into some strange bugs here and there but that will be it and probably documented by builder already. I believe it is quite easy to make your own build, can be done with free tools. http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Build_Documentation#Build_and_Install almost equals waste of time for me - way too much work for too little gain. Having said that Stipe builds were repeatedly faster in benchmarks than official build when I used it, 1.5.0.1 or something. He uses some of the rare original contribution, patches from Mmoy - see forum again, I can say much more about details. My impression is a few have tried to optimize and truely tried to make a difference and many more want to make their "own" build... How internet is  Not worth a headline when it comes down to real browsing. Flock and K-Meleon are real alternatives.