A week after a pre-beta version of Firefox 4 appeared on Mozilla's nightly developer build site, the browser has been released as a public beta.
The latest version of the free, open-source Web browser sports some visual changes, including Chrome-like tabs on top, and an Opera-like button to replace the menu bar. Firefox 4 now supports Google's WebM HTML5 video format, regulates plug-ins such as Flash to a separate process for greater protection against crashes, and offers faster JavaScript performance (though it still trails Chrome and Opera). Firefox 4 also implements a new Extension system called JetPack, which makes coding Extensions easier to build and use.
Getting Started with Firefox 4 Beta
The Firefox 4 beta 1 install (available for Linux, Mac, and Windows) kept my existing Firefox 3 install intact, enabling me to test it while keeping the stable version for everyday use. Chrome doesn't offer this convenience.
The sub-9MB installer downloaded quickly, and setup took half a minute on my dual-core 3.16-GHz machine with 4GB RAM. Upon launching Firefox 4 beta, a dialog opened, which asked if I wanted to make Mozilla's browser my default Web browser - something I wouldn't recommend just yet. Though the browser was surprisingly stable during testing, it doesn't support some of the extensions I use. A yellow bar appeared across the top of the browser, highlighting privacy and open source statements.
The first time I opened a new tab, I was presented with a link to the optional "New Test Pilot Survey" of browsing habits, which was easy to fill out. Also included is a Feedback button that, like the Microsoft Office 2010, lets you select happy and sad faces to report your experiences. And that's not all for reporting - data for toolbars, tabs, menus, and password management will send data to the Firefox team at Mozilla to help them improve the browser. You can view the results if, for example, you want to know which toolbar button is most frequently pressed. There's some nice data in here, and it's nicely presented in graphs.
Interface News
The move to tabs atop the browser began with Chrome's first beta, which backtracked a bit, moving to a design with a window border over the tabs (though they were still on top of the menu). The design is good in that it leaves more space for the Web content, but it may confuse some users who are used to seeing them down below the toolbars.
Firefox 4 beta 1's new menu button may also confuse some people, since its function isn't perfectly clear. Opera took a similar approach, using a button with nothing but an "O." It later ended up having to add the word "menu" to the button to make its function clearer.
Another detail taking inspiration from Opera (and Safari) is Firefox 4's combining of the Stop and Reload buttons, which switches between the two functions depending on whether you're loading a page or not. Unfortunately, the new menu button didn't let me access Private Browsing mode; for this I had to enable the full menu view, unless I knew that the Control-Shift-P key combination would get me there.
One interface nicety still missing in Firefox but present in every other browser is configuring a new blank tab. All other browsers present some view where you can easily choose a page from your favorites or history; Safari gets the most glamorous here, with its 3D gallery of your most visited sites. Firefox is the last holdout here, displaying a blank white page. You can still get to your most visited sites, however, with the new Bookmark button, which replaces the Bookmark toolbar. You can reinstate the bar if you want, but the new design gives Web pages more room.
The address bar now offers a switch to tab option when you start typing text from another page's URL or page title. This seemed kind of a minor thing, since it's easier to just click on the tab header of the page you want, but it could help those I know who tend to leave over a dozen tabs open at once.
HTML5 Video
Firefox 4 beta 1 supports the new HTML5 video format propounded by Google: WebM. This uses the newly open source VP8 codec, as opposed to the licensed H.264 codec that's used in Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer 9. H.264 also powers the majority of online video, but when Google begins transcoding YouTube videos to WebM, the bulk of the world's online video content will be available in WebM.
It remains to be seen, however, if this will apply to pay videos, which YouTube is exploring. In fact, Google recently sent a love letter expressing its commitment to Adobe Flash, precisely for its ability to handle content protection, among other things.
A WebM version of a Leonardo Dicaprio film trailer (in both 360p and 720p) successfully played in the browser, and quality was impressive. But a 1080p Niagara Falls trailer didn't really look nearly as good as Blu-ray 1080p. And unfortunately, when I tried to view the video in fullscreen, the picture only filled the browser window. Fullscreening the window with F11 still didn't hide the top and bottom browser player bars. The fullscreen issue is known to Google, and remains a problem even in Chrome.
On the excellent HTML5 Test page, Firefox 4 beta 1 scored 189 out of a possible 300, with each point representing an HTML5 feature. This is up from a score of 139 in the currently released version 3.6. By comparison, Safari scores 207, Chrome scores 197, Opera 159, Internet Explorer 8 27, and IE9 Platform Preview 84.
Firefox 4 beta 1's HMTL5 support brings several extra features including drag-and-drop; history APIs, which let pages modify history entries; and new form controls. There's also a new HTML5 parser, which lets developers use SVG and MathML inline in their pages and improves performance of some activities and fixes dozens of bugs. Mozilla has produced a comprehensive page comparing HTML5 and other technology support compared with Firefox 3.5 and the currently released 3.6.
Other related but not specifically HTML5 technologies added include CSS transitions, computed values, and support for touch. A lot of these, unfortunately, use a –moz prefix, meaning they'll only work in Firefox. Firefox 4 also supports Websockets, which allows sites to easily communicate with a server. The open WebGL 3D graphics spec is also supported in the browser, but is turned off by default.
Plug-in Tweaks, New Extensions
Firefox 4 beta 1 plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, or Apple QuickTime are now run in their own separate process, which can prevent crashes in the event of an error. One of Firefox's hallmarks, Extensions, which let power users customize the browser in almost any way imaginable, are getting a whole new architecture, called JetPack. The new system makes extensions easier to program, by using common Web programming such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Of course this means that extensions using the old format have to be upgraded. An Add-on Compatibility Reporter from Mozilla lets you help nudge developers to get on this.
When I checked out the new extension manager, I was struck by its resemblance to Chrome's, as it lives within the Web page area rather than having its own separate window as it has in previous versions. There are side options for Get Add-ons, Extensions, Themes, and Plugins. The first displayed a placeholder saying, "This area will soon explain what add-ons are, feature some of the best, and help you pick from thousands of ways to customize Firefox."
A couple of major benefits for users is that they'll no longer have to restart the browser to install extensions, and they won't be thwarted from starting the browser by incessant update messages whenever any extensions have new versions.
JavaScript Performance
For a quick test of JavaScript speed, I ran the popular SunSpider JavaScript benchmark by WebKit on my 3.16GHz dual core with 4GB RAM. It came in at 659ms. The improvement over Firefox 3.6 was a marked 25 percent, as that version took 872ms to complete the tests. It's even improved since last week's prerelease version. Still, Firefox 4 beta 1 trails Chrome 5 (356ms), Opera 10.5 (410ms), Safari 5 (439ms), and Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview (470ms).
For a rundown of other browsers' performance, see my roundup, The Best Browser: Summer 2010 Edition.
The Early Verdict
Keep in mind that this is just the first beta, and while it does show a lot of the new look and capabilities of the browser, Mozilla has even more planned, including setting and history syncing, GPU acceleration like that in IE9, more JavaScript performance optimizations, OS X and Linux themes, and new privacy controls.
These are grand goals, but a question remains: Can Firefox still compete in a world where Chrome is setting the browser market ablaze, Microsoft is working on a fast, standards-compliant browser in Internet Explorer 9, and Opera continues to lead with groundbreaking new features like Unite and Turbo?
Firefox still has its believers, as is evident by a recent announcement by IBM that it was standardizing on Firefox as an open-source browser not beholden to a large company. Mozilla said the beta is safe and stable for everyday use, but many extensions won't work.
You can sample it yourself by pointing your browser toward the Firefox Beta Download page. It's available only in English for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but several of the new features have only been implemented in the Windows version.
For now, this first glimpse of Firefox 4 is pleasing, though not earth shattering. I like Opera and Chrome's trimmed interface, and Mozilla does well to emulate this. They're taking a risk with overhauling the very popular extension format, so only time will tell whether that was a smart move. New support for HTML5 and other emerging Web standards is of course welcome, but Firefox is not in the lead here, and even less so when it comes to JavaScript performance. (And it remains to be seen whether HTML5 video will stay with H.264 or move to the nascent WebM format.) If Firefox can deliver on all these fronts, it still may be able to hold off the threat from Chrome and the rest and retain our Editors' Choice for browsers.