Firefox I suppose, you caught the news that Firefox 3.5 is now available. I skimmed over a few news sites to get an idea about its new features. Once again, I was shocked by the lack of objectivity in our Western media. All sites I have read were praising Firefox 3.5 as if the Mozilla guys had just reinvented the Web (like Opera).

Take the article at Channel Web as an example. The author names five features that are reason enough to say Firefox 3.5 rocks. One is an extension of the “awesome bar” that allows you to search in your bookmarks. Now, seriously, is this really a feature that rocks?? I don’t think you need a PhD in psychology to analyze this behavior. The author didn’t just want to write a review about Firefox 3.5; he wanted to belong to the big, Firefox-praising community. Thus, she was desperately trying to find reasons that could support her faulty claim.

Yes, some of the new Firefox features are nice, such as the new privacy functions and session control. However, these are nothing spectacular, either, because other browsers already had these features. So Firefox is just catching up, and there is nothing that “rocks” here.

Of course, the number one feature that all sites mention is improved performance. Channel Web writes that, according to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 is twice as fast as Firefox 3.0, and 10 times as fast as Firefox 2.0. I had to rub my eyes 10 times to really believe what I was reading there. I have used Firefox since version 1.0 and updated to 3.5 immediately after it was released. I need the browser all day, and not only to view HTML pages. I work with quite a few Web apps that use Javascript heavily.

Now, what really worries me is that it appears that I am the only one who is not experiencing those unbelievable performance improvements. I already opened my computer to see if someone had hidden a Firefox speed inhibitor inside – but nothing.

Just to be sure, I tried a few of my Web apps in IE8 to see if I could at least experience Internet Explorer’s alleged sluggishness. But again – nothing. I clicked and clicked and clicked, and everything performed just like in Firefox.

Peacekeeper-balls So what the heck are all these benchmarks actually measuring? I tried Peacekeeper (what a name for such a controversial topic!). It is really nice. Some cool animated graphics floated over my screen and a few other funny things happened in my browser. I really enjoyed watching the moving balls; it is just a pity that the Web apps I use don’t have such cute balls. I probably would appreciate it a lot if they rolled twice as fast now in Firefox 3.5.

I suppose I am one of the few bloggers who actually has run a benchmark. Nevertheless, everyone seems quite convinced that Firefox 3.5 is lightning-fast. Even Microsoft-friendly blogger Paul Thurrott just copies the product overview from Mozilla’s homepage, making us believe that

Web applications like email, photo sites and your favorite social networks will feel snappier and more responsive.

Obviously, we have another meme pandemic here (like the Windows 7 praising meme) that is spreading fast now (even faster than Firefox can load a Web page). Everyone actually believes that Firefox 3.5 is, indeed, much faster than its predecessor. Psychologists call this a placebo effect. I am sure that 9 out of 10 Firefox 3.5 users swear that they really can “feel” the performance improvements.

This reminds me of my teenage years, when I was trying to tune up my moped at least once a week. Of course, it always “felt” faster after these tune-ups (if it started up at all). Even more important were the comparisons with other moped-tuning “experts.” Naturally, everyone wanted to have the fastest moped; and we were running “benchmarks” regularly to determine who the moped king was. Unfortunately, all those speed improvements didn’t really help me to arrive at school on time.