Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 Released

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-nice-good-morning dept.

balster neb writes "Mozilla has released the first Beta of Firefox 4, the next major version of the popular web browser. Apart from the new 'Chromified' tabs-on-top UI, there are many major improvements in performance and HTML5 support. This release also adds support for the new WebM video format. Other changes include faster DOM and CSS performance, improved UI responsiveness, hardware 2D acceleration, experimental WebGL support, and better JavaScript performance (though this beta does not include the new JaegerMonkey JIT engine). More details on the Mozilla blog."

5 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Option to use the old UI? by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate the Chrome interface. I was hoping that Firefox wouldn't go that route. Does anyone know if the new beta still has an option to use the classic interface?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Option to use the old UI? by Chaos+Incarnate · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tabs on top makes sense. Tabs as the window's title bar doesn't.

      --
      Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
    2. Re:Option to use the old UI? by quickOnTheUptake · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can go further:
      tabs are a hack by applications to make up for the failure of the traditional WM model and it's inability to handle large numbers of windows.

      --
      Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
      Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
  2. Re:I'll never let go, Firefox. I'll never let go. by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    P.S. Gecko is still much faster at some things, i.e. image rendering and animation.

    If every damned site out there wasn't overusing Javascript that might be a compelling argument.

    A lot of sites with heavy image content scroll smoothly in Firefox, Opera, and even IE, but struggle along at about 5 fps when scrolling with the webkit browsers. That's my main issue with Chrome.

    --
    "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
  3. Re:Not bad by Improv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would it matter who came up with any given feature first? In software, all ideas are recycled.

    --
    For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.