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Firefox 4 RC1 Released
IgnitusBoyone writes "Mozilla has now released Firefox 4 RC1. For most beta participants the update should be automatic, but for those holding out until it gets closer to feature freeze, now is likely a good time to test the next major release. Aside from a complete redesign of the user interface, Firefox 4 offers several new features (release notes) including an integrated sync manager, improved methods for tab-switching and organization for tab-heavy users."
I have to say that so far I'm very impressed. Once I'd moved the tabs and buttons back to where I like them it was great. Memory usage is much better and the speed compared to 3.x is incredible. Sync is nice as you can run your own server.
I prefer the old buttons and liked having a status bar but i'm sure somebody will create add-ons to fix that.
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RC is scheduled for later this month.
(But of course there won't be a / vertisement for it.) SeaMonkey 2.1 final will be based on Gecko 2.0.1
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Power users -really- use FF -without- disabling compatibility checking? Amazing.
I've been using FF4 nightlies with "incompatible" add-ons for over a year, now... Most work fine, occasionally something wont, but that's usually fixed by getting a beta from the addon author's site.
Actually, Chrome uses more memory than Firefox with both just one tab and several tabs.
Oh yeah, and Firefox is the only browser that doesn't support H.264 even if it's installed in the system. How am I supposed to watch those HTML5 H.264 videos?
Um... wget/curl? Any download manager + VLC/MPlayer? It's not hard. There's a million different ways to play H.264-encoded content outside of Firefox. Inside, though, I'm sure it's possible to write a plugin that replaces embedded H.264 HTML5 tags with an external player (like Microsoft did).
Regardless of the possible workarounds, this isn't a battle of functionality, this is a battle of rights. Mozilla isn't supporting H.264 even if it's a system codec because it wants to make sure that all Firefox forks and related projects can use the codecs without fear of patent infringement. Then there's also patent licensing and things like that, which are a huge hurdle for open source software in the USA. VLC, for example, is based in France so there's no fear of patent infringement (software patents don't exist over there). Firefox/Mozilla is based in the USA, so anything that they distribute must be legal. Including H.264 would cost Mozilla $5,000,000 per year, content creators would still have to pay license fees (eventually) for H.264-encoded content, and any and all forks/related projects of Firefox would not be able to include H.264 without breaking the law (unless they're based where software patents don't exist).
Mozilla supports WebM/Theora/Vorbis not for technical reasons; it supports them for ideological and economic reasons. I completely agree with their decision and I hope that software patents are abolished in the USA as well someday so we can get H.264 playback... :/
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Investigate View-Toolbars-Uncheck Tabs on top.
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No, it's crap. I love Firefox 4, but bookmark sync is pretty friggin' awful. I've lost entire folders full of bookmarks, which wouldn't be a problem if there was a way to roll back to previous versions. There isn't. Once they're gone, they're gone. Luckily I still had my Foxmarks account and was able to bring back most of what I'd lost. Until there's a way to view your sync'd data in a secure online account, and to roll back to previous versions, I suggest you stay far far away from Firefox Sync if you value your data.