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Firefox 4 Released!
A great number of readers have written in to tell us that Mozilla has officially announced the final, official, Firefox 4.0. Congrats to all the developers who have code in the build. If you want some neat eye candy, you can watch a sweet visualization showing where the downloaders are.
I hope Mozilla makes the next version as secure as IE9
What a horrible thing to say
The visualization at http://glow.mozilla.org/ is really nice, and I like the fact that there are over 120 downloads every second!
By the way, my firefox updated automatically, does anybody know if it counted as a download?
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
I just downloaded and installed FF4, and unlike what I had expected from the new version, FF4 is actually noticeably slower on most websites, including Slashdot :-/
Performance: Firefox is up to six times faster than the previous release. With improved start-up and page load times, speedy Web app performance and hardware accelerated graphics, Firefox is optimized for rich, interactive websites.
I think I see the problem here..
That's a feature.
Everyone and their mother is coming out with faster web browsers. IE9 boasts increased performance. Chrome has been blowing away the competition with its blazing fast Javascript engine.
No one is coming out with a browser that takes its time. Until now. FF4 takes the concept of performance and turns it on its head.
Aren't you tired of websites that instantly display? Don't you like reading your favorite site leisurely? What if you could have that plus random crashes and uncontrollable memory leaks?
What would you pay for something like that? Would you pay $100 for software of that quality? What if I told you that you could have all this and more for the low, low price of $59.95?
That's right! A slow browser, massive memory leaks, and random crashes in your computer today for only $59.95!
If you act now, I'll throw in a set of plug-ins that will turn your modern day CPU into the legacy system of yesteryear!
Firefox 4! Bring computing back to the speed of life.
Call now. Operators are standing by.
According to something I think I read on Phoronix a couple weeks back, it support the binary Nvidia driver already. They say that trying acceleration with any other Linux driver crashes way too often to be shipped enabled.
You're waiting on the driver vendors to fix their shit, not Firefox.
Privacy and avoiding data miner look like pretty good reasons for me.
Does it still have the AwfulBar?
Not interested.
Which will take them 6 months to fix as they concentrate on pleasing the Oooh shiny! crowd with ever more useless bells and whistles.
Cynic? Moi?
Yup, as everyone knows, new = insecure and old = secure. That's why I stick with good ol' IE 6: It's been out so long, I know all the holes have been patched.
Right click on the blank gray space next to the tabs and uncheck the "Tabs on Top" property. That will put the tabs back below the location bar, where they belong.
Did you know subscribers can see articles in the future?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
According to the download page, the new version includes "even more awesomeness". No word on whether or not the level of suck has decreased.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Went to Chrome... Not looking back without a good reason...
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No, the tin foil hat he's wearing probably blocked that information out.
Are you using Windows XP? I find that FF4 is slower than FF3.6 on my work computer (winXP) but faster on my home computer (vista). The new version renders using Direct2D on Vista and Win7, but uses software rendering on anything older. I'm sure you lose a lot in that mode of operation.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
And I hope Mozilla makes the next version as secure as IE9 with its sandboxing and all the extra security features Microsoft has build on Windows 7.
See divxo et al for more info. Still, it's good that the shills are learning. They are at least trying to emulate what they perceive to be a typical slashdotter's speech. Not that it's working just yet, but they are making some efforts. There are a lot of inconsistencies that they must iron out, though, so they should lurk moar. That's mostly for 4chan, not /., if you're taking notes (which I recommend you do).
also the only browser with Chrome to fight bad the big guys and doesn't support the evil H.264 - someones have to fight for our rights!
Whle there are some weird people out there, most people who are averse to corporations and patents refrain from phrasing their opinions as if they were five-year-olds. "Evil H.264" just don't cut it as believable material. But it's ok, at least it's an effort. I must point out, though, that if you're against the "big guys", you probably won't gratuitously draw attention to their product being so superior.
the succesful look that Opera has and made Firefox look as good as Opera
This was an understandable mistake. But most of us, if we really care enough to keep voicing our opinions about browsers, will pick one or two. I'm yet to see someone describing with such (poorly worded) passion all browsers. If Chrome, Opera, Firefox and IE9 are all so cool and good, I'd expect a "meh, all browsers are pretty competent nowadays", not "hey, Firefox is great, it's now as great as Opera is great, and Google rules because it defies "bad the big guys" and IE9 is so secure WOW so glad to b here guys!". To get a little more believable, how about choosing one browser to focus on as a favorite? Tell us why you use it etc. Make up some stories. It's cool, a lot of people here are doing it right now. Some are even becoming lawyers or war veterans, so retroactively using a software for a couple of days seems comparatively easy. I really wish for the shills to get better. They can still defend a product to their employer's heart's content, but doing so believably would be better for al of us. Not that quality is always necessary to blend in, since the standards aren't that high, but avoiding glaring oversights is, otherwise they'll only blend in with the trolls.
I have numerous dev/test sites with similar addresses that change name/config almost weekly. With Firefox/awesomebar, I can just type the differentiator directly into the browser instead of making a bookmark (which in a week or two will be out of date anyway).
As a web engineer, Firefox has no peer yet. Chrome/Safari are nice, and do offer features and speed that FF doesn't (at least on OSX), but Firefox (thanks to awesomebar) keeps me productive in a very dynamic work environment.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
When I first fired it up, my first thought was: "Yuk, What happened to the fonts?"
Some searching revealed this is the MS Win7 DirectWrite Font rendering(IE 9 does the same thing).
Disable HW acceleration and all is well with my fonts.
Why does DirectWrite font rendering look so awful? Do other people actually prefer this (fonts are thicker and closer to together).
Here's my FF4 upgrade plan:
If I decide to roll back:
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Have you tried creating a new bool in Firefox's "about:config" ? - Navigate to the following page: about:config - Tell Firefox you'll be careful - Right click in empty white-space and select New -> Boolean from the context menu - Enter the following for the new value: extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0 - Set it to False - Restart Firefox... All of my extensions have worked no prob using this work-around. Until the add-on devs update their wares, this should suffice...
To answer my own question: yes, there is..
Cheers,
Ian
As always, we posted the portable version within a few hours over at PortableApps.com. As we did an extended test of version 4.0 portably following the whole 4.0 beta and RC process, it's turned out to be a nice, stable release. It's great for running from your flash drive, DropBox or just trying out a new firefox install without affecting your local one.
Release Announcement | Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 4.0 homepage
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Actually, I'm running it right now (in order to access an internal site).
VMware + Windows 7 + IE9 uses less memory than a native FF4 which has been running for a few hours. That's rather sad.