So I was just browsing web pages and somehow I ended up landing on Mozilla’s Minefield Start Page. Mozilla’s the same folks that brought us Firefox – You know The web browser that has it all.
So…what’s Mozilla Minefield?
Minefield is the codename used for Firefox’s trunk builds meaning that it’s an alpha/pre-release version of Firefox. Most of the people that have used Minefield claimed that it’s faster than the current stable version of Firefox and even faster than Google’s Chrome.
So I decided to check it out. I went ahead and downloaded the latest nightly build. As far as installing Minefield is concerned I didn’t encounter any problems on Vista (64-bit). Opening it for the first time brought up a warning that says some of my Firefox add-ons won’t work (DNA and FireFTP) with the latest nightly build of Minefield which in my case is version 3.1b2pre , AdBlock works so wuhoo! I’m pretty sure that later on the rest of them will work especially as to how fast Minefield is being developed.
From my own experience I must say that it definitely feels faster than the current stable release of Firefox especially if you enable the TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine – Firefox’s newest JavaScript replacing SpeedMOnkey. To enable the TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine, type about:config in your Location Bar now type javascript.options.jit.chrome right-click on it and select Toggle (Which sets it to true) after that type javascript.options.jit.content again, right-click on it and select Toggle. And just to be sure everything works, restart Minefield.
I don’t use Google’s Chrome so I can’t really compare Minefield with Chrome but Ars Technica said that the latest version of Firefox’s JavaScript Engine (That’s what Minefield is using by the way) is faster than Google’s Chrome V8 (Click here for Ars Technica’s Article).
If you’re one of those people that likes to try new stuff, I would recommend you checking out Mozilla’s Minefield. All in all it was a positive experience for me and did I forget to say ‘Minefield’ just sounds really cool?
