MOZILLA LAUNCHES FIREFOX 4 FOR ANDROID AND MAEMO

On Tuesday, Mozilla released the latest version of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo smartphones. Firefox 4 now includes support for Firefox Sync, which allows you to sync open tabs, history, bookmarks, passwords, and other data, between your computer and your smartphone. The new Firefox allows for tabbed browsing, add-on installation, and features a new, streamlined look.

Mozilla says it will also automatically hide the browser controls when they aren’t in use, which should allow users to view more of the website you’re parked on. There’s also options to save PDFs, share pages, and customize the default search engine. Mozilla says that Firefox 4 is up to 3x faster than the stock Android browser.

FIREFOX 4 DOWNLOADED OVER 6 MILLION TIMES IN 24 HOURS

Mozilla announced on Tuesday that the final release version of its Firefox 4 Web browser was available for download. Within its first 24 hours of availability, the browser was downloaded over 6 million times. Microsoft’s latest browser release, Internet Explorer 9, was downloaded 2.35 million times in its first 24 hours of availability.

Version 4 of the popular Firefox Web browser features a variety of enhancements including a redesigned UI, improved tab management and faster performance. Mozilla’s Firefox browser is the second most popular browser in the world according to market share tracker Net Applications. Firefox held a 21.74% global browser share in February, behind Internet Explorer’s 56.77% and ahead of No. 3 browser Chrome, which has grown to 10.93% in a very short period of time. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have seen their shares decrease over the past year, while Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari browser have gained popularity.

FIREFOX 4 LAUNCHED TODAY

Mozilla has today officially launched the final version of Firefox 4 and with it brought some of the biggest changes to the Firefox web browser for quite some time.

Lets start with the new interface which has been completely redesigned to get out of your way. In reality that means more screen real estate for web pages, and more functionality hidden away behind buttons.

Tabs now appear by default above the address bar and therefore take up less space as they sit where the window bar used to be. To the left of your tabs is a Firefox button which hides many of the links and menus you’d find on the typical menu bar, which is also missing from the default interface. On the far right is a small Bookmarks button giving access to the usual list of links, and above that is a Home button.The layout can be changed to make it more like Firefox 3.x though, but in general this layout does seem to be a progression we as users should embrace as it frees up the screen.

One of the major improvements Firefox 4 introduces is something called Tab Groups (formerly Tab Candy and also referred to as Panorama). This is going to please anyone who gets frustrated managing lots of tabs all the time, and something we have previewed before. Basically, it allows you to assign each tab a group, then Firefox will only display the tabs in an active group on the tab bar (think of it like having multiple desktop views, but within your browser). If you want to see tabs in another group you simply click the Tab Group icon which brings up the groups, and select the tab you want. You can also right-click a tab and move it to a group. Once you’ve used this organization feature a few times you’ll wonder how you coped without it.

While you’re exploring this new found tab paradise you may also notice web pages rendering faster. That’s the new JavaScript engine which is touted as being up to 6x faster than that used in Firefox 3.x. Staying with performance features there’s also WebGL support for 3D on the web, and hardware acceleration taking advantage of OpenGL, Direct2D and Direct3D on your machine’s GPU. There’s also crash protection in case a plug-in like Flash dies so as to not crash the whole browser.

Mozilla has also taken on board the fact we don’t just use one point of access for the web anymore. You may have a main PC, netbook, smartphone, and tablet. The Sync features allows the same Firefox experience to be accessed across multiple devices. So you get all your bookmarks, passwords, history, and even open tabs automatically fed to each device.

There’s also a bunch of new security and personalization features to help make the upgrade to Firefox 4 compelling.

Firefox 4 is available now as a 12MB download which will act as both a new install or an upgrade. I can confirm that all your bookmarks and preferences seem to be carried over to the new browser, but it’s worth doing a backup of your bookmarks anyway before doing the upgrade.

MOZILLA'S FIREFOX 4 TO RELEASE ON MARCH 22ND

Mozilla has confirmed that the newest version of their Firefox browser, 4.0, will launch on March 22nd. Firefox 4 has had one of the longest development cycles out of all the Firefox versions, having gone through 12 betas before reaching the release candidate version last week and now readying for the stable release next week.

“Firefox 4 RC1 has received a very warm welcome; it’s time to make a decision to ship,” said Mozilla’s Damon Sicore. “As of now, there are no known issues that would stop us from shipping RC1 as final.

Mozilla has stated earlier that version 4 would be the last long evolution update and they would be going to smaller updates that take shorter development and testing times moving forward. This is being done to help shore up the encroachment on Firefox's market share by Google's Chrome browser which previously had a much shorter update cycle.

FIREFOX 4 RC DELAYED UNTIL 2011

Mozilla announced yesterday that due to delays in getting beta versions of Firefox 4 out, the release candidates (RC) will be pushed back into 2011.

"Development on Firefox 4 has not slowed down and strong progress is being made daily, Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, wrote in a note to the mozilla.dev.planning mailing list. "However, based on the delays in completing the 'feature complete' Beta 7 milestone against which our Add-on developers and third-party software developers can develop, as well as considering the amount of work remaining to prepare Firefox 4 for final release, we have revised our beta and release candidate schedule."

The beta 7 release has been pushed to early November, according to the beta schedule. Beta 8 and 9 are scheduled for November, with beta 10 slated for early December, although the schedule could still change. [PC Magazine]