Firefox 4 released – to battle IE9 and Chrome

Posted on 22. Mar, 2011 by Sarthak K in Internet

There are more than 400 million users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser worldwide – and even as I write this post, 2.8 million of them  have already downloaded Firefox 4 – which was released only a few hours back!

Firefox 4 is a major upgrade for Mozilla. It will feature a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack, a redesigned minimalist interface, faster JavaScript performance, and greater support for HTML5, including Google’s WebM HTML5 video format.

Whats new in Firefox 4

• A new, streamlined user interface.
• Enhanced performance courtesy of the new JägerMonkey JavaScript engine and graphics hardware acceleration.
• Application tabs and tab grouping.
• Built-in bookmark, open tabs, history, preferences and password synchronization.
• Improved privacy controls and security.
• Improved HTML5 capabilities such as new form elements, high-definition hardware-accelerated WebM video and 3D WebGL.
• CSS3 transitions and transformations.
• A revamped add-ons manager.
• Multi-touch for some touchscreen devices.
• A new web console.
• Crash protection.

What’s more, it’s available in 76 languages and can be installed on most operating systems, including Windows XP. It has also been released for Mac OS and Linux platforms.

Firefox 4 Vs IE9 Vs Chrome

But Firefox 4 has been a little late in coming, particularly since its been in beta since June and was trumped by Microsoft who released Internet Explorer 9 more than a few days back. As for Google Chrome, its already become the fastest growing browser and churning out updates on steroids! In fact, although I have been loyal to Mozilla for many years now, 2011 saw me downloading and installing Google Chrome.

I am writing this post in Chrome itself, which I find light (unlike the memory hog that firefox tends to become) and fast. Also, some of the Chrome apps  and extensions are simply brilliant. However, I did not intend to write this post as an obituary for firefox!

The positive side of Google Chrome also becomes a downside for it – the fact that it brings out updates so often, and some of the changes are so drastic that extension developers have to race against time to bring their products up to date with Google’s browser. That’s the reason many plugin and extension developers prefer Firefox, because it tends to be stable for long periods of time. In fact, Mozilla claims that 70% of extensions developed by third parties will work with Firefox 4.

IE 9 had 2.3 million downloads in in the first 24 hours, while Firefox 4 had 1 million downloads in the first three hours of its release. Shows the difference in popularity! Of course, Internet Explorer as a whole is still the leader of the pack, benefitting from the fact that it comes bundled with the most popular OS on the planet. Yet, IE 9 seems to be a marked improvement and may well give stiff competition to the latest entry from Mozilla’s stable.

The battle is wide open, and so is the jury.