Firefox 4 ready to go
It’s been a while in the coming but a beta version of Firefox 4.0 is now out.
The most noticeable changes to the browser are the interface ones. Although the interface changes are not available in all beta versions yet they are included in the Windows-specific release.
The major interface change is that the tabs for open sites are placed at the top of the window, above the URL bar. This is much like the layout of Google’s Chrome browser.
The usual menu bar has also been replaced, this time with a simplified Firefox menu. The dropdown menu is home to basic operations such as saving, opening and so on. This is only on Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Also in the interests of simplifying the interface the stop and reload buttons have been merged into one and the bookmarks are accessed through the bookmarks button to the right of the URL bar.
The Add-Ons process has also been moved to its own tab. Previously it was launched as a separate window.
Under the hood
The other big features aside from the interface are less obvious to the casual user. These include the crash-protection which isolates processes so that if one tab crashes it doesn’t bring down the whole browser.
Firefox 4.0 also supports a growing number of HTML5 features including WebM video, which is Google’s open source video format. The WebM format is part of a move away from the likes of Flash-based players to the more open tag in HTML5.
Firefox 4.0 also supports other HTML5 features including WebSockets, partial CSS gradients, and WebGL support for 3D graphics although this is disabled by default for now.
Firefox 4 << comments and views
Loading ...