Firefox 4 Beta 1

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Perhaps it's too early at the moment, but I'd like to see some in depth testing of process isolation Vs plugin isolation, comparing stability and resistance to malware. The details are interesting to us geeky types, but in the long run it's only the end result that matters - most people are not going to care what the underlying technologies are.

 

nevermind, my thought was irrevelant.

 

Firefox 4 beta looks like a good (not extraordinary) upgrade but, if these are all the main changes, IE 9 is going to be more exciting - at least to me.

The IE 9 project looks more focused in real world browsing experience - full hardware (GPU) acceleration support comes to my mind.

 

ummm... im pretty sure FF4 beta does or will have that before release.

 

Just one curious question: Has anybody set html5.enable to "true" in about:config, and does that make a difference in rendering speed? See for v.3.6.5 http://silverwav.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/firefox-3-6-5-3x-faster-with-html5-enabletrue/

 

It already does, but I'm not sure to what extent it's used.

 

alright thx for confirming.

 

Thanks! I had tried FF 4 some time ago but deinstalled it again as too many extensions had not yet been compatible.

 

techspot : A Compendium of Firefox 4 Beta Tweaks

 

Chrome alike

 

Thinning Down FireFox 4's Tab Bar





Opera alike

 

Wow,I just downloaded FireFox 4 Beta. I like the interface alot. It is much nicer and seems very fast. I lost intrest in FF3 in july of 2009. I did not like the way it was working . This may win me back over. I've been using IE8 and Opera and am happy with them but this is Very nice. When the Full Release is out I hope they don't Bloat it with junk and leave it clean as it is now.

 

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Thanks for this link. I was able to get my essential extensions working after disabling the compatibility check in FF4. Specifically Adblock Plus, Grab & Drag and Readability work just fine, though they are still classified as not compatible.

 

I sometimes load 150 tabs

 

Your browser to your system resources: "Resistance is futile!"

 

I agree, nice skin ABP is still working ...

 

Seems pretty nice. It's still not as fast as Chrome, but I think they've got it going in the right direction...

 

So far I like it.

Launching FF feels faster, surfing is smooth. (no need for FirefoxPreloader, which I use with version 3). The interface looks slicker - closer to browsers like Iron (Chrome?) and Opera, which is another improvement. An my add-ons/plugins continue to work (this is important since FF plugins are the reason to use FF).

I don't know enough to constructively opine on the under-the-hoods changes, but as far as above-the-hood goes, I'm personally glad there are no radical (i.e. not broken = don't fix).

As with version 3.6.3, I did get some firewall warning about plugin-container.exe wanting outgoing TCP access (which I blocked) - anyone know what that's about?

 

Actually the system (Linux, Debian) handles it quite well. I often have 150 firefox tabs, opera, xpdf, 10 xterm windows, azureus, music player, video player, emacs all running simultaneously on a linux "aero" 3d desktop. Only Firefox gets a bit unstable (crashes every 3-4 hrs or so)
Of course, I have 3GB of ram.

 

Firefox 4 Beta 2 released:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Mozilla_Firefox_4.0_Beta_2_d5905.html