Mozilla Firefox 4 RC Windows, Mac and Linux Now Available

Mozilla Firefox 4 Release Candidate is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

It has now finished the the beta cycle and you can download it as an available release candidate here, or those of you who have been beta testing Firefox 4 will automatically be updated to this new version anyway.

The community of add-on" developers will be pleased to know that 70% plus of the Firefox add-on's are now compatible with Firefox 4. If you know of a favorite add-on that isn’t marked as being compatible, you can help to test the add-on, using the Firefox Add-ons Compatibility Reporter.

Over 8,000 bugs have been fixed by the FF team since the first beta release and they are asking people to test the release candidate and submit their own feedback, this should help make sure that Firefox 4 is and will be the best it can be. If you would like to, you can also join in on the Mozilla "QA" to help validate the new features, enhanced performance, stability and HTML5 capabilities in Firefox 4.

Lee

Just installed the pukka version.

Phil

Not sure it's any kind of improvement ???

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Originally Posted by BillTodd

Not sure it's any kind of improvement ???

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For the most part I think the upgrades just slow down your computer and sometimes have something useful.

Having said that I don't use Firefox - I use Opera. They tend to be the first to introduce new features. They were the first to have tabbed web browsing, and now you can 'stack' the tabs which I find useful.

Well, I've just downgraded back to 3.6.16 to stop the thing thrashing my HDDs :thumbdown:

Bill

Firefox 4 is now available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, soon to be available on Android and Maemo devices.

What’s New in Firefox 4:

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Fastest Firefox Ever

• 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.

Streamlined Interface

• App Tabs: give a permanent home to frequently visited sites like Web mail, Twitter, Pandora, Flickr.
• Switch to Tab: easily find and switch to any open tab from your Awesome Bar without opening duplicate tabs.
• Panorama: drag and drop tabs into manageable groups to save time while navigating many open tabs.

Private and Secure Synchronization

• Firefox Sync: access your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices.

Most Customizable

• New Add-ons Manager: easily discover and install more than 200,000 add-ons to customize the features, functionality and look of Firefox.

Private and Secure

• Do Not Track: Firefox is leading the Web towards a universal standard Do Not Track feature that allows users to opt-out of tracking used for behavioral advertising.
• Firefox puts privacy first, fixing flaws in some Web standards to prevent others from accessing your browser history.
• HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): automatically establishes secure connections to stop “man in the middle” attacks and keep sensitive data safe from interception during the log-in process.
• Content Security Policy (CSP): prevent cross-scripting attacks by allowing sites to explicitly tell the browser which content is legitimate.

Cutting Edge Tools for Web Developers:

• The JavaScript engine incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter for faster page-load speed and better performance of Web apps and games.
• HTML5 support in Firefox includes hardware accelerated, high-definition video (WebM), 3D graphics, offline data storage, professional typography, touchscreen interfaces and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound and more.
• Firefox 4 also improves existing tools like CSS, Canvas and SVG to enable developers to make exciting Web pages.
• Firefox provides uninterrupted browsing when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If one of these plugins crashes or freezes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Simply reload the page to restart the plugin.

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Cheers,
Lee

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Originally Posted by Lee Roberts

Over 8,000 bugs have been fixed by the FF team since the first beta release

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That's certainly not bragging material. I know FF is a massive amount of code but 8000 bugs seems like an awful lot of mistakes and oversights...

I am using Fire fox 3 which is running well . Is there any option to upgrade my fire fox 3 into fire fox 4 Rc for windows XP. Please also tell me the features of Firefox 4 RC .

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Originally Posted by birchy

That's certainly not bragging material. I know FF is a massive amount of code but 8000 bugs seems like an awful lot of mistakes and oversights...

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It all depends on what they've classed a 'bug', and how they're being tracked. What might be logged as a bug, may be something simple like a typo, or simply one developer has changed something that means something else needs changed, and they trigger that other change by logging another bug for another developer to pick up. Bug statistics are pretty much useless at telling you how good/bad something is.

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Originally Posted by m_c

It all depends on what they've classed a 'bug', and how they're being tracked. What might be logged as a bug, may be something simple like a typo, or simply one developer has changed something that means something else needs changed, and they trigger that other change by logging another bug for another developer to pick up. Bug statistics are pretty much useless at telling you how good/bad something is.

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Agreed, and it's better than doing what Microsoft seem to do - namely release the software then rely on windows update to fix it!