Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 Released 190
balster neb writes "Mozilla has released the first Beta of Firefox 4, the next major version of the popular web browser. Apart from the new 'Chromified' tabs-on-top UI, there are many major improvements in performance and HTML5 support. This release also adds support for the new WebM video format. Other changes include faster DOM and CSS performance, improved UI responsiveness, hardware 2D acceleration, experimental WebGL support, and better JavaScript performance (though this beta does not include the new JaegerMonkey JIT engine). More details on the Mozilla blog."
Re:Option to use the old UI? (Score:5, Informative)
Just tried it out. You can enable the menu toolbar, and move the tabs back to the original position.. So yes.
Re:Option to use the old UI? (Score:5, Informative)
However, I liked tabs on top of the addressbar, feels more intuitive.
Try it safely on your PC with Firefox Portable 4b1 (Score:5, Informative)
At PortableApps.com, we released the portable package of Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 yesterday soon after 4.0 Beta 1 dropped. It's a great way to test the latest beta without impacting your current Firefox install since it runs self-contained from a single directory. You can even install it to your Desktop or Documents folder.
Try Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 out today with Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 4.0 Beta 1 [portableapps.com]
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 4.0 Beta 1 homepage [portableapps.com]
Not bad (Score:5, Informative)
After some UI tweaking, I got it looking and behaving like Firefox/Mozilla always has, and I'm left with a browser that's slightly faster and has better interfaces for some things. The drag-to-resize text fields in all websites is wonderful. The new extensions management interface is nicer but will take some getting used to.
Re:I'll never let go, Firefox. I'll never let go. (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you need to? Chrome renders pages faster, sure, but I don't really give a shit about a couple of milliseconds rendering time. Chrome has isolated tabs, but crashes more than Firefox anyway (at least for me).
Finally, when you have a really nice open source browser that isn't entirely controlled by a giant behemoth that knows everything about you, why not use it? Seriously, do we need to be throwing more power Google's way?
P.S. Gecko is still much faster at some things, i.e. image rendering and animation.
Re:Try it safely on your PC with Firefox Portable (Score:1, Informative)
It's a great way to test the latest beta without impacting your current Firefox install
much like the version you download straight from Mozilla. Seriously, has there ever been a Firefox Beta, RC or nightly build that at all impacted your standard install?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not bad (Score:1, Informative)
Just so people don't start spreading false truths about how Firefox invented that, Safari had that feature a long time ago. If someone knows if Opera had that before Safari, feel free to reply.
Re:I'll never let go, Firefox. I'll never let go. (Score:3, Informative)
Gecko may not be as fast as WebKit or Presto, but come on... comparing it to Trident?
Fastest to slowest:
WebKit/Presto, Gecko, (insert from 5 to 10 imaginary rendering engines here), Trident.
Re:WebM (Score:5, Informative)
First result on google for webm.....
Remove the big ugly orange button (Score:3, Informative)
For those of you who don't like the big ugly orange button, Download Squad [downloadsquad.com] tells you how to change its colour or make it transparent.
Re:Not bad (Score:3, Informative)
True, but to be fully fair, resizeable textareas were available as a Firefox add-on since at least March 2007 via the Resizeable Textarea add-on [mozilla.org], three months before Safari 3 was announced and released as a beta.
WEBSOCKETS!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's Hoping... (Score:3, Informative)
Download Helper doesn't seem to detect any videos.
DownThemAll is incapable of actually downloading anything.
Firebug is rendered completely inoperable. The menu is there but empty and the statusbar icon doesn't do anything.
FireFTP is even more inoperable than Firebug, not even showing any menu entries.
Fission doesn't work anymore but has been rendered obsolete anyway.
TabGroups Manager hasn't yet adapted to the new layout code so the tab group bar is always the lowermost toolbar above the content pane. Other than that it works just fine.
So, what does work?
Add Bookmark Here^2 works as expected.
Console^2 works as expected.
Download Statusbar (officially compatible) works as expected.
Element Properties works as expected.
Flashblock works as expected.
Ghostery seems to work as expected.
Leet Key works as expected (at least the text transformers do).
Live HTTP Headers works as expected.
NukeAnything and Remove It Permanently seem to work as expected.
RefControl seems to work as expected.
Slashdotter works as expected. (This reminds me, perhaps with Fx 4 the new comment system will work again...)
Tab Mix Plus works as expected.
User Agent Switcher works as expected.
Web Developer seems to work as expected, although I don't use the toolbar, which has benn reported to be broken. The context menu is intact and functioning, though.
Overall, the tally is not bad for a new major version. I think that most of the broken extensions will be fixed by the time (or shortly after) 4.0 proper comes out.
Re:Now hopefully... (Score:3, Informative)
Even Internet Explorer 6 got one in Windows XP SP2.
Official Linux and Mac 64 bit builds (Score:3, Informative)
4.0 will be the first version with first class 64 bit support from Mozilla.
For some reason, the 64 bit builds aren't on the main download site, but are available here:
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b1/ [mozilla.org]
Linux and Mac only at the moment, I assume Windows 64 bit builds are to follow in later versions.
From the greatly improved performance scores, It appears that the tracing JIT is finally enabled on the Linux 64 bit version.
Now where's my 64 bit flash adobe?
Re:Still no SVG in img tags (Score:3, Informative)
SVG in img tags and background images is going to be in for FF4, but will land in a later beta.