Saturday, January 3, 2009

What is TraceMonkey? (Why you should be drooling over Firefox 3.1)

TraceMonkey is a new technique that Firefox 3.1 will use to compile javascript. Javascript is the web coding language upon which many feature-rich websites are built. Websites that run inside your browser but which have functions similar to a software program on your desktop, like Gmail and Blogger, run on javascript. Firefox 3.1 with TraceMonkey will run these websites much faster than the current version, which is Firefox 3.0.3.

Lifehacker explains how TraceMonkey works and how much faster it will be.

I can hardly wait! TraceMonkey is available now, if you're willing to install the pre-release version of Firefox. Last time I was ahead of the official Firefox release schedule, though, I got burned with all sorts of bugs that forced me to go through a tedious and time-consuming troubleshooting and reinstall process; I'd prefer to wait patiently for the upcoming speed.

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