Mozilla launches Firefox 4 Beta 1

Posted by admin on July 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Mozilla on Wednesday released the Firefox 4 public beta, the latest iteration of the free, open-source Web browser.

With Firefox 4 Beta, Mozilla introduces a brand new interface. It takes cues from Google Chrome and other browsers by placing the tabs on top by default (in Windows only; it’ll come to Mac OS and Linux later on), and hiding the menubar (instead, a new Firefox button provides access to commonly used commands).

While the bookmarks layout has changed, the functionality is the same; to access your bookmarks just click on the star and select from the drop down menu.

If you like to keep numerous tabs open at a time, Firefox now lets you search for the tab you want right from the Awesome Bar. This is a great alternative to cycling through all your tabs with keyboard shortcuts or your mouse.

To access the switch tabs function, just place your cursor in the Awesome Bar (that’s the URL entry field for you Firefox newbies), and start typing name of the site or page you want to access. The Awesome Bar will start showing you a few options for past and current sites. One of the top options should be the tab you’re looking for, and will be marked as “Switch to tab”. Just select that option, hit enter, and Firefox will switch to the tab for you.

The new release comes several days after Mozilla released the first pre-release code for Firefox 4, and the updated version brings a number of changes designed to enhance the browser’s usability and security.

Like other new browsers, Firefox 4 Beta provides some crash protection features: If a browser plugin crashes, it’ll just bring down the plugin instead of causing the entire browser to crash.

The obvious change is the browser’s look. Like Chrome and Opera, tabs are now located at the top of the browser (Windows only), and a new add-on manager is included to make it easier to find plugins.

Under the hood, Firefox 4 beta 1 heightens security, offers crash protection, supports technologies that are vying to become new Web standards (HTML5 and WebM), and contains other bells and whistles.