Firefox 4 heads into beta

Posted on 7 Jul 2010 at 14:01

Mozilla has announced that the fourth version of Firefox, its popular open source web browser, has made it into beta and is officially available for download.

Firefox 4 represents the biggest revamp the browser has had since it launched and includes an engine re-write from the ground up. This has greatly boosted performance and added 64-bit capabilties, as well as ‘enhanced’ HTML5 support.

There’s also a new add-on manager, which includes support for add-on sandboxing, thus preventing add-ons from crashing the browser. Mozilla has added an improved bookmarks manager and a better Aero Peek integration for Windows 7 users, too.

What’s more, the interface has also had a complete overhaul and now looks remarkably similar to Opera 10.6. The tabs have been moved to the top to “make it easier to focus on the web content and easier to control the tools in your web browser,” said Mozilla in a blog post.

Mozilla claims that Firefox 4 beta 1 also fixes flaws in some web standards that “could expose your browser history.”

Firefox was the first browser to really capitalise on Internet Explorer’s deficiencies, but its market share has been stagnant for the past year – it stalled at around the 20 per cent mark after gaining a reputation of being a bit bloated in today’s hyper competitive market where speed seems to be everything.

While Microsoft’s market share has continued to dwindle, Google, Apple and Opera have gained in the same period.

If you’re interested in trying out the beta, you can download it here.

Author: Tim Smalley

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