Firefox 4.0

[Larry-G]

The Web is all about innovation, and Firefox sets the pace with dozens of new features to deliver a faster, more secure and customizable Web browsing experience for all.

User Experience. The enhancements to Firefox provide the best possible browsing experience on the Web. The new Firefox smart location bar, affectionately known as the "Awesome Bar," learns as people use it, adapting to user preferences and offering better fitting matches over time.

Performance. Firefox is built on top of the powerful new Gecko platform, resulting in a safer, easier to use and more personal product.

Security. Firefox raises the bar for security. The new malware and phishing protection helps protect from viruses, worms, trojans and spyware to keep people safe on the Web.

Customization. Everyone uses the Web differently, and Firefox lets users customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons.

* Change Log

* Firefox 4 is available in over 80 languages
* Uses JägerMonkey, a new, faster JavaScript engine that is up to six times faster than Firefox 3.6
* Support for the Do Not Track ("DNT") header that allows users to opt-out of behavioural advertising
* Firefox Sync is included by default, allowing you to securely synchronize between multiple computers and mobile devices
* Certain graphics rendering operations are now hardware-accelerated using Direct3D 9 on Windows XP, Direct3D 10 on Windows Vista and 7, and OpenGL on Mac OS (OpenGL on Linux will be supported in the future)
* Direct2D Hardware Acceleration is now on by default for Windows 7 users
* WebGL is enabled on all platforms that have a capable graphics card with updated drivers
* Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format, hardware accelerated where available
* Firefox button has a new look for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users
* Tabs are now on top by default on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
* You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar
* The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, 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 OS X when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins
* You can turn any tab into an "App Tab" by right-clicking on it and selecting "Make into App Tab" from the context menu
* The default homepage design has been refreshed
* Overhaul of the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and startup performance
* Per-compartment garbage collection is now enabled, reducing work done during complex animations
* Additional polish for the Firefox Add-ons Manager
* Improved web typography using OpenType with support for ligatures, kerning and font variants
* Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions
* Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system
* HTML5 Forms API makes web based forms easier to implement and validate
* Support for the new proposed Audio Data API
* Support for HSTS security protocol allowing sites to insist that they only be loaded over SSL
* A new feature called Panorama gives users a visual overview of all open tabs, allowing them to be sorted and grouped
* An experimental API is included to provide more efficient Javascript animations
* Firefox now supports the HTML5 video "buffered" property
* Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation
* 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
* CSS Transitions are partially supported
* Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently
* 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
* Web authors can now get touch events from Firefox users on Windows 7 machines
* A new way of representing values in JavaScript that allows Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code (used for things like graphics and animations) more efficiently

 http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-4.0&os=win&lang=en-US

[pooface]

Installed this on my work pc today, and gotta say I think it's a massive improvement over v3...

[punisher]

an absolute massive improvement, was using all the beta versions until the final release came out and its been great, preffered to any other browser

[Larry-G]

an absolute massive improvement, was using all the beta versions until the final release came out and its been great, preffered to any other browser

exactly the same here. been using the beta versions for months, and now v4.0 is finally live it's not contest for me. i would not consider using any other browser.

[punisher]

one thing im havin problems with .... hotmail wont save my logins ... whereas ie8 and ie9 do ... any idea why? is it a problem with firefox?

[Larry-G]

one thing im havin problems with .... hotmail wont save my logins ... whereas ie8 and ie9 do ... any idea why? is it a problem with firefox?

no idea mate. i have not logged into hotmail for years. i use the mozilla thunderbird client for that.

[punisher]

yeh same here, ill jus keep messin around, maybe suma i fingered lmao

[Sicilian]

I must be getting old, grumpy and set in my ways, preferred the old version

[pooface]

I must be getting old, grumpy and set in my ways, preferred the old version

Nahhhh, always been old & grumpy

[silverfox0786]

actually tbh i uninstalled version 4 as i didnt like it much comapired to the old version 3

much be getting old too

[pooface]

actually tbh i uninstalled version 4 as i didnt like it much comapired to the old version 3

much be getting old too

I personally preferred the look of the v3 a little, but the performance I've noticed in v4 compared to v3 has been much better in my little play yesterday, and there are a few nice functions in v4 to v3, so overall am happy to use v4...

[Stanman]

I tried it yesterday and the performance was not any quicker than Opera.

[pooface]

I tried it yesterday and the performance was not any quicker than Opera.

Compared to firefox 3 though, I found it to be much better performance wise

[punisher]

yeh when comparing to v3, v4 is a lot better, maybe not as quick as opera but, opera not my cupa tea

might still give opera a try though

[Larry-G]

tried opera and uninstalled it because it was PAP.