Mozilla has made Firefox 4 Beta available to the public. Now it does not have the Tab Candy feature that is in the custom build (that build is a beta 3 pre-build). New features in Beta 2 are.
- Tabs are now on top by default on Windows and OSX – Linux will be changing when the theme has been modified to support the change.
- You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu.
- Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions.
- Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system.
- JavaScript speed improvements due to engine optimizations.
- Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation.
- See the complete changelist from the previous beta.
Features from Firefox 4 Beta 1
- You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar
- New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release)
- Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions.
- The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac and Linux.
- The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you’d like).
- Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
- CSS Transitions are partially supported.
- Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time.
- Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently.
- Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.
- An experimental Direct2D rendering backend is available on Windows, turned off by default.
- Web developers can use Websockets for a low complexity, low latency, bidirectional communications API.
- Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs.
- More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.
- Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload.
- CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history.
- New HTML5 parser.
- Support for more HTML5 form controls.
Download it yourself and tell use what you think:
Firefox 4 Beta page
NOTE: The Tab Candy feature in the last firefox post did not make the deadline for this beta, I would expect to see it in Beta 3.
4 Responses to “Firefox 4 Beta 2 now available”







its fast i love it i cant wait for the final
Yup, Final is going to be awesome. I just hope they add a little more space between the minimize, maximize, and close button and the tabs (on top) bar. And fix the statusbar drop down menus.
its fast i love it i cant wait for the final
Yup, Final is going to be awesome. I just hope they add a little more space between the minimize, maximize, and close button and the tabs (on top) bar. And fix the statusbar drop down menus.