In a recent development, Mozilla released the latest version of Firefox 4 Beta web browser. Based on the Gecko 2.0 Web Platform, Version 9.0 has been made available encouraging users to download and report on the product issues. The browser has been termed as stable and safe for daily web browsing use, although the company has plans to roll out new features, marking certain upgrades before the final product release.
The Firefox 4 Beta 9 has been developed, keeping in mind the demands of today’s web users. The latest release gives you greater control over browsing, along with rolling out some brand new features such as the App Tabs and Panorama, making it easier to navigate the web.
Apart from the previous features of the Firefox 4 Betas, Version 9.0 has been upgraded with the following:
1. Overhaul of the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and startup performance
2. Per-compartment garbage collection is now enabled, reducing work done during complex animations
Previous features included in the upgrade:
1. Firefox 4 Beta is available in 76 languages
2. The Firefox Sync setup experience has been greatly improved across desktop and mobile devices
3. Speed, functionality, and compatibility improvements to WebGL
4. Additional polish for the Firefox Add-ons Manager
5. Uses JägerMonkey, a new, faster JavaScript engine
6. Certain rendering operations are now hardware-accelerated using Direct3D 9 on Windows XP, Direct3D 10 on Windows Vista and 7, and OpenGL on Mac OS X
7. Improved web typography using OpenType with support for ligatures, kerning and font variants
8. HTML5 Forms API makes web based forms easier to implement and validate
9. Support for the new proposed Audio Data API
10. Direct2D Hardware Acceleration is now on by default for Windows 7 users
11. Firefox button has a new look for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users
12. Support for HSTS security protocol allowing sites to insist that they only be loaded over SSL
13. Firefox Sync is now included by default
14. A new feature gives users a visual overview of all open tabs, allowing them to be sorted and grouped
15. An experimental API is included to provide more efficient Javascript animations
16. Firefox now supports the HTML5 video “buffered” property
17. Tabs are now on top by default on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
18. You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu
19. Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions
20. Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system
21. JavaScript speed improvements due to engine optimizations
22. Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation
23. You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar
24. New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release)
25. Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions
26. The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
27. The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default
28. Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins
29. CSS Transitions are partially supported
30. Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time
31. Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently
32. Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format
33. Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs
34. More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction
35. Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload
36. CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history
37. New HTML5 parser
38. Support for more HTML5 form controls
39. Web authors can now get touch events from Firefox users on Windows 7 machines
40. A new way of representing values in JavaScript that allows Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code (used for things like graphics and animations) more efficiently
Performance enhancements included in the upgrade speeds up the browser, marking the increase in speed functionality from start-up time to page-load as well as performance of web applications and games.
Download Firefox 4 Beta 9 [here]
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