Firefox 4: fast, powerful, empowering

By on May 11, 2010 at 11:19 AM
Software May 11, 2010

FireFox 4

Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox for the Mozilla Corporation, gave a slide show presentation to the Mozilla community detailing what may be in Firefox 4. We say “may” as most of Beltzner’s slides included the following disclaimer:

Screen shot 2010-05-11 at 8.41.05 AM

The presentation focused on three key themes: speed, power, and control. Speed and power are easy to understand; the Mozilla team wants to have the strongest possible code base, leveraging the latest and greatest web standards and technologies. The “control” piece appears to be where Firefox 4 will get most of its UI sexification and usability refinements. Potential  improvements include: enhancements to the Awesome Bar, a revamped extensions manager, site-specific preferences, and a tighter navigation/tab experience. Beta builds of Firefox 4 should start rolling out in June or July, with a final release candidate scheduled for October. We’ve got the slide presentation queued up for you after the break. Firefox users, let us know what you think!

Read

Tags:
, ,
29 Comments

Related Articles

  • idk

    and free too!

  • Steve Slob-on-a-knob

    I think I was in love once. I don’t remember. She was Brazilian, or Chinese, or something weird. I met her in the bathroom of a K-Mart and we made out for hours. Then we parted ways, never to see each other again.

    Damn it!

  • http://www.allthatsfresh.com Cannon

    Just as long as they fix the memory hogging it does, I’m cool with it.

  • jonathan

    Nice! firefox is my browser of choice.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • herse182

    I love FireFox but have also taken a liking to Google Chrome so I’m curious to see what FireFox 4 has in store

  • CB

    Boy that is looking more like itunes!

    • Sean Smith

      Dead on! that’s what i was thinking exactly!

  • http://www.scottcorgan.com Scott Corgan

    Catching up to Chrome…somewhat…

  • Paradox

    I wonder how much memory this version will hemorrhage. And how much bloat, that should be put into extensions, will be in the core now.

    Guess it doesn’t matter to me, as I have switched to chrome. All I care about is if they keep up to webkit concerning css3

    • spanky

      I am recently testing Chrome again as well….and while it’s a “snappier” browsing experience memory footprint is still terrible….have you actually compared the 2 on memory usage?

  • noir

    speed and power are nice, how about stability though. every computer I run that has firefox, the browser crashes 6 times or more a day. too many tabs and it goes stupid. fix that first and maybe, just maybe I’ll like it again, right now, a pain in my ass everyday.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • MiniMe

    Me want.

  • StevenGlansburg

    Is this better than safari? I don’t care about speed just aesthetics.
    This message has been approved by me, StevenGlansburg

  • user

    I wonder if it will print pages reliably now.

  • Doll

    This looks A LOT like Safari…

  • justin

    Its funny to read all the hate, a year and a half ago most everyone was in love with firefox, now that it has a much larger footprint it’s no longer a good browser, or cool.

    • StevenGlansburg

      no, now that there is a better, faster browser out there (chrome), it’s no longer a good browser, or cool

  • bob

    If you want fast, powerful and empowering just get Chrome.. it’s that way now and it’s been that way for a long time now…

  • JFA

    I still like firefox it still is my primary browser on both my pc and mac, but I have never really given chrome a chance, although I will since I heard nothing but wonders about it. I just hope firefox fixes the whole memory hog issue, I know that it chokes ur computer to death with the memory use.

    • StevenGlansburg

      take the plunge. go chrome

  • kar-droid

    Sweet. I supported Firefox since the early day. I choose Netscape over ie in early day. Firefox release was one of my happy days. I never did defect to saferi even in Mac. I never use chrome either.

  • jayrodathome

    What’s Firefox?

    “Posted from Google chrome”

  • Justin

    I’ve used Firefox for years, since it was called Firebird. However, lately I’ve switched to Chrome due to Firefox’s propensity for memory leaks and high memory usage overall. If they can fix this issue in Firefox4 I’ll gladly switch back.

  • Ragflan

    I think as long as you have a decent computer, Firefox should be the default over Chrome. I find that Chrome generally works better than Firefox on Netbooks (lower end). Firefox has never crashed on me (of late) but the one thing that makes me feel really comfortable about using Chrome is the individual processes for each tab. But then again, Firefox has a way better session manager.

    I guess in the end there’s no BEST browser. Just the best one for your needs. I think I forgot the point I was trying to make but anyway, EXCITED!

    • Ar-Droid

      I got 6Gigs of DDR 3 on top of the i-7 920 running in 64 bits window 7. It doesn’t matter which browsers I use, they are fast. For me its the feature over speed since I got a decent computer. And I like Firefox over Chorme. Chorme is like driving around with a driver in Toyota corolla,. Firefox is much like driving a Mustang V8.

  • Ragflan

    I use Firefox and Prism together.

  • doublejizzle

    I used to use Firefox solely, but now it seems to be getting worse for me with more sites not rendering the first time, causing me to refresh a time or to. Opera is slowly taking my attention away. Might give Chrome a try.

  • http://followsimmons.blogspot.com/ Chris S.

    It seems to me that Firefox 4 is mean’t to mimic Chrome. Look at the toolbar layout on the first Screenshot slide. That is just a Google Chrome page with the Firefox URL pulled up. Personally I think this is a great Idea. Take the simplicity of Chrome for regular users, keep it clean and fast and then still enable all the development tools as add ons for that user-base. I may just switch back to Firefox with this release.

  • BizGuy

    looking forward to the beta. i just hope Firebug is updated for it really quickly. :)

blog comments powered by Disqus