Firefox 4 Beta 1

It appears Firefox 4 Beta 1 is out in the wild.
Remember not all current extensions will work in this build.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/4.0b1-candidates/build1/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%204.0%20Beta%201.exe

 

What's new in 4 that 3.xx doesn't have?

 

Here's a starting point for you
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/05/10/firefox-4-vision-fast-powerful-and-empowering/
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgtW2Iw-kE-

For Dev Stuff:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_4_for_developers

 

Thanks pjb.....

 

Just released (officially) complete with Known Issues and What's New:

http://www-trunk.stage.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

 

Thought there would be more features added since it is a major release. Opera adds more features in its minor releases. Guess you can only add so many features onto a browser. Lots of under-the-hood changes though.

 

Looks like Opera now

 

You're kidding, you meant like chrome, right?

Thanks.

 

I played with the Alpha, it probably looks the same...


Post some screenshots for others to see...

 

No... It looks more like Opera than Chrome. Just shrink the tab previews on Opera.

Here are some ripped images.
http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/firefox4theme.png
http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/1060_win_visual_tabs.png

 

I get this on those links:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /images/uploaded/1060_win_visual_tabs.png on this server.

 

Confirmed, the links are not working.

Thanks.

 

They work fine for me.

Maybe you can view them from the actual page. http://www.neowin.net/news/browser-roundup-internet-explorer-chrome-firefox-and-opera

 

links work for me confirmed

 

And the guys at portableapps.com already have it portabilized for the road warriors!

Here:
http://portableapps.com/news/2010-07-06_-_firefox_portable_4.0_beta_1

There's also a small list of what's new.

 

Last time I tried Firefox was 3.3, startup times are improved

(tested after a few re-boots, so pre-fetching also picks up FF, checked that all HD activity was zero before cold/repeat start).

 

Just tested FF 4 Beta 1 and I thought I was the only one who felt that it resembles my beloved Opera.

Anyway, it tested well, is, and will be another great browser.

 

Will FireFox 4 start each tab in it's own process?
That's what I would like to see.

IndexDB will be interesting to see if it will be a potential problem.
If so, cleaners will have to clean this or someone create an add-on to block writes to this, similar to Noscript.

 

Not in this beta release. They're still working on process separation (Electrolysis).

 

What's the point of that since Firefox already includes an isolated process for plugins? That was introduced in 3.6.4.

 

It's another security measure from how I understand it, plus a bit more crash protection....and I don't want it, not one bit. I'm okay with plugin separation, but not tabs having separate processes. It's one reason I haven't gone back to Chrome, which is otherwise a nice, speedy browser.

I don't want to hear anything about systems having loads of RAM, I don't care. It's ridiculous to have a bunch of processes running for any program, let alone a browser in which some people sometimes will load up 5 or more tabs. Why is it alright for a browser to do this, but load up a security program that has a bunch of processes running and people start screaming?

I know Mozilla is going to do it anyway, but I hate it.

 

You'll get over it eventually.

 

Process seperation is the only thing I like about Chrome, otherwise it's no good.
If FF had it sooner, then Chrome would be a much smaller userbase.

How much longer before FF 4 is mainstream?

 

That was rather rude, but oh well *shrug* I guess I just don't see the necessity of the feature. I think plugin separation alone is good enough. As far as Chrome, the only crashes I ever had with it brought down the entire browser, not just a single process. So I never got to see any "benefit", only a bunch of processes taking up resources.

 

Now now, saying Chrome is no good besides process separation will just get you spanked by the "speed freaks", who will all too happily post their charts comparing browsers As far as FF 4 being officially released, I'm willing to put money on an early to mid September date. Mozilla isn't much on keeping their browser in Beta stages for very long.