After months of delays, Mozilla has finally released its Firefox 4 Web browser, and so far it has already accrued over 8 million downloads. Generally, if a product’s release date keeps getting pushed back, it makes it even harder for the end-result to live up to the hype. Is Firefox 4 an exception to this rule? It seems so.
Ars Technica has taken a hard look at the latest version, and overall seem rather impressed. In fact, editor Ryan Paul has gone as far to state that the browser is “another major breakthrough for Mozilla”, and that it has successfully restored Firefox’s competitiveness in the market. With Chrome still growing in the charts, and IE9 doing a lot of things right, I’m sure Mozilla is pleased to see this kind of reception.
As mentioned in another one of our news posts from a few weeks ago, Mozilla has completely revamped its “Features” page to show you all of what’s new in Firefox 4. I highly recommend you check it out to familiarize yourself with things. Even if you’re not interested in Firefox, it might still be worth a look just to see what the competition is now doing.
For me, the most important introduction to Firefox 4 is the synchronization feature. Since moving to Chrome, I’ve relied on that feature heavily, so I’m glad to see it available here in Firefox 4, since I’m going to attempt at moving back and see if things have improved enough to reinvigorate how I feel about the browser.
Have you guys upgraded to Mozilla’s latest and greatest? If so, tell us your thoughts!
One of the major areas where Firefox is still lagging behind other browsers is its lack of support for process isolation—a feature that has significant implications for reliability and security. A Firefox pilot project for multiprocess browsing was launched under the codename Electrolysis in 2009, but it hasn’t really progressed as rapidly as some had hoped.