In the past several months, I’ve read a huge number of complaints about Firefox, most of which are about it hanging and requiring several minutes to load up before you can actively use it. Personally, I suffer from this daily, and here’s the typical process I use to work around it:

1. I click to load Firefox
2. I click to load Chrome
3. I check my email on Chrome
4. I reply to comments on this blog with Chrome
5. I start using Firefox

In general, it takes that amount of time for Firefox to fire up before I can start using it. Mozilla are lucky, in my case, that I am such a fan of some of their plugins, otherwise I would be using Chrome as my preferred browser.

That said, Firefox version 3.6 beta 4 has just been released. I’ve not installed it yet, but will do so after I’ve finished writing this post, I’m really hoping that it will fix this load speed problem I’ve been experiencing!

Here are some of the new features in this release:

• Changes to how we allow third party software to integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.
• The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• More than 140 bug fixes from the last beta to improve performance, stability, security and features.
• This beta is available in more than 60 languages – get your local version.
• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

You can download the latest version here.