Mozilla announced a new component in Firefox that will significantly speed up the browser’s JavaScript performance.

Called TraceMonkey, the component is a Just-In-Time (JIT) JavaScript compiler that will eventually replace Firefox’s current SpiderMonkey JavaScript compiler.

Mozilla’s Interim Mike Shaver told PC Magazine that the new compiler can improve JavaScript performance by up to a factor of seven, and with more speed improvements down the road. JavaScript is increasingly important, not only because of more-demanding sites, but because much of the Firefox browser itself is coded in JavaScript.

Mozilla’ Shaver hinted that the kind of JavaScript performance made possible with TraceMonkey could one day eliminate the need for proprietary plug-ins such as Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s SilverLight in order for sites to incorporate highly interactive content such as web-based graphics editors. Ironically, the TraceMonkey team has produced a Flash demo showing TraceMonkey in action, manipulating images. Said Mozilla’s Shaver, “[With TraceMonkey we're] competing with native code rather than with scripting languages. People have been building sites under the assumption that JavaScript is slow. Image manipulation today is not feasible in JavaScript, but TraceMonkey changes that. We’re at the very beginning of what we can do with tracing.”

In unpublished PC Magazine testing using the popular SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, Firefox 3.1 already outperforms Internet Explorer 7 by a factor of 7, so the new technology will double that gap. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, too, is nearly half the speed of Firefox in the benchmark. The TraceMonkey Just-In-Time (JIT) JavaScript compiler uses a technique known as a “trace-tree” which isolates and compiles the most frequently used code, such as a loop, first, and “trees” out to other hot code. The tracing uses optimization based on that in Mozilla’s Tamarin virtual machine project. [Yahoo! News]

Another potentially disastrous glitch ahead of the world record attempt came when servers handling the downloads collapsed under the weight of visitors checking to see if the new version of the browser was available.

At their busiest the servers were handling more than 9,000 downloads per minute. Within five hours the number of downloads for Version 3.0 exceeded the 1.6 million set by Firefox 2.0 in October 2006. Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries. “The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen” said Marketing head Paul Kim. Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it “an extremely impressive accomplishment”.

The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted. Mr Kim told the BBC: “The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea. “It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world.”

Marketing manager Mary Colvig said no party is planned to celebrate the record until the actual certificate is presented by Guinness World Records in London next week. “Here at Mozilla headquarters (in Mountain View) I think most of us are just going to try and get to bed early now that we have the confirmation. We are all tired.”

Security flaw
On launch day some of the shine was taken by security firms claiming to have found the first flaws in the new software. Within five hours of Firefox 3.0 making its debut, DV Labs/Tipping Point reported a flaw that potentially let an attacker take over a PC if a user clicks on a booby-trapped link. Mr Kim told the BBC “Firefox users are safe. We have a patch in the works and hope to release it very soon.” [BBC NEWS]

The number of people that actually got through before the crash. Watch out how many people are already downloaded the firefox 3. Its already reached a download count of 2517893++ Downloads/minute.

The highest downloads are coming from USA and Espanol.