With the release of new versions for both Internet Explorer and Firefox plus a new beta for Chrome, that has been a lot of talk about browsers this month. However, Firefox is definitely the hot topic at the moment. With the release of Firefox 4 yesterday, both old and new users have a lot to be impressed by.
Less Means More
Firefox has entered the world of minimalism. With their new interface, Firefox 4 is more pixel-friendly and makes the most of the amount of screen space that can be dedicated to actual web content. The lack of a menu bar and tabs on top design bare a striking resemblance to Chrome and just like Chrome’s little wrench, Firefox has implemented a Firefox button which holds all of the menu items. For those who like the traditional look, you can move things around and customize your Firefox to your liking.
One of Firefox’s most notable improvements is its new tab feature called Panorama. Panorama allows tab fiends like me to group their tabs and switch between them effortlessly. This little window shows a visual layout of your open tabs and lets you organize them. Users can open one group at a time while Firefox saves the other groups so it doesn’t clutter the tab bar. And to top it off, we have App Tabs. App Tabs are frequently visited tabs which you can pin so that it gets a “permanent home” as a tiny, favicon on your tab bar (notice, the little twitter bird on my tab bar in the screenshot above).
Blazing Speeds?
Mozilla’s new JavaScript engine (Jägermonkey) promises increased speeds, they have bragged that Firefox 4 is three to six times faster than its predecessors and I cannot refute their claim. From my personal experience, Chrome is faster than IE and Firefox 4 seems up to par if not slightly faster than Chrome. There is however no definitive result on which browser is fastest. In Mozilla's own favored benchmarks, Kraken, Firefox took 9,224ms compared to IE9's 19,136ms. Chrome was slightly faster at 8,794ms. In the SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks Firefox was slower than IE but faster than Chrome – the browsers attained 308.5ms, 288.8ms and 346.0ms respectively – while in Google's V8 benchmarks, where bigger numbers are better, Firefox was in the middle with a score of 3,269 compared to Chrome's 7,101 and IE's 2,053. There is however no doubt that Mozilla lived up to their claim of Firefox 4 being faster than its predecessors.
Putting It All Together
Add-ons have also gotten an upgrade and now have their own window instead of a pop-up menu. Searching for and managing add-ons in this new browser is somewhat like browsing through the iTunes App Store. The window includes an introduction page which recommends interesting Add-ons and it makes things so easy that a caveman could do it. Synchronisation features have also been adjusted in this new Firefox. Synchronisation is no longer only about bookmarks; it also syncs histories and currently active tabs. This new sync feature is also compatible with mobile devices such as the Android.
Fresh Start
After 3 years since Firefox 3, Mozilla is definitely winning back some fans with this upgrade; it sure has me giving them a second chance. Firefox is stepping back into the game with a polished look, enhanced speed and synchronization. These are however just some of Mozilla’s many improvements for Firefox 4, after all, a lot has changed in the last 3 years so a simple make over is not going to cut it. A full list of new features can be found on Mozilla's introduction page. Better yet, just download it and experience the new Firefox for yourself.
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