Time to try Firefox 4.0 beta 7

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 11 November 2010 08:33

Business IT - Open Source

Firefox 4.0 beta 7 is only a beta, but it's "stable and safe to use for daily web browsing" according to Mozilla officials.

Sometimes a version number bump seems like overkill when you look at what's changed. But Firefox 4.0 implements a boatload of improvements and new features.

Beta software isn't for everyone, but according to Mozilla officials, work on Firefox 4.0 has reached the stage where the newly released beta 7 "is considered to be stable and safe to use for daily web browsing, though the features and content may change before the final product release." Despite that rider, it seems that beta 7 is feature complete.

The main drawback at this time is that not all add-ons have been tested for compatibility.

As usual, the release notes include lists of what's new, known issues and more, but here are some of the highlights.

The JägerMonkey JavaScript engine delivers improved speed. According to people who worry about milliseconds, performance in this area is significantly improved over beta 6, making Firefox 4.0 one of the fastest browsers. Other sources of speed improvements include graphics hardware acceleration for some operations on Windows and Mac OS X.

What else is new? Please read on.