If you haven’t been to the Mozilla home page lately, you may not have heard that the open source non-profit organization is releasing betas for the next version of the Firefox Web browser.
Firefox 4 downloads and installs in under a minute for most users, and seems to continue Mozilla’s reputation for delivering quality software quickly.
The first thing you’ll notice if you’re a browser aficionado is the Google Chrome-ness of this new Firefox. Menu and toolbar clutter are consolidated behind a few key buttons, providing more screen real estate for Web content.
Between this and the reports that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 supports a Chrome-esque interface, it seems that Google’s influence in the browser space eclipses Chrome’s market share.
Unfortunately for Google, Chrome still has some severe feature deficits and bugs, including limited recognition by major Web sites, and poor handling of embedded content (particularly PDF files).
If you’re a fan of Chrome’s UI, consider installing Firefox 4 until Chrome achieves maturity. Mozilla is stealing another page from Google’s book with theintroduction of silent security updates.
Firefox 4 will only prompt users to upgrade when moving to a major point release, such as 4 to 4.3, or or 4.3 to 5; for all other updates, the browser will update itself without prompting.
The new feature aims to keep Internet users secure by default. Power users who work from home and don’t want to run the risk that an auto-update will ruin their work day can turn off this feature in Firefox -> Options -> Advanced -> Update.
A major reason for Windows 7 users to gravitate to Firefox 4 is its support for Windows 7 features such as Jump Lists.
With Firefox 4, all of the major browsers now support opening your most frequently visited sites and performing basic tasks straight from the Taskbar.
Right-click on the Firefox 4 icon in your Taskbar to see its Jump List.
Firefox is also preparing itself for the Windows 7 push into the tablet space bybuilding touch-screen support into its latest release.
As of this writing, Firefox 4.03b isn’t available everywhere, but can be downloaded off of select servers such as Softpedia.
Firefox 4′s features makes it clear that Mozilla and Microsoft are chasing Google Chrome. Will these latest updates be enough to prevent Chrome from snagging more market share?
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