As I spend most of my working life convincing users that web based applications are the way to go, I figure getting to know most of the browsers that they should be using is important.For my own day to day use I have found that I have been increasing
ly using Chrome (on the mac) as it feels quicker and does just about everything I need it to do (the dev tools are still no replacement for firebug).If you want to try the latest and greatest web browser then download for your specific operating system and take it for a spin!
BUT REMEMBER: This is beta software folks so it
might crash and burn on you, might be worth keeping our other browsers handy just in case.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the new UI. Once again firefox has been listening and has taken design elements that have come aboutin other browsers and incorporated it into their own. In particular is the tabs which are much less obtrusive.
I am also told that on windows the menu bar is hidden by default in an attempt to maximize browser space and do away with the stuff you don't use most of the time.
Switching to open tabs by searching is a great little feature that allows you to search through the location bar and switch to other tabs you have open by typing in part/all of the URL. This might not sound like much but for those of us with dozens (yes dozens) of tabs open at once it's much better than flicking through all those tabs.
A new bookmark button gives quick and easy access to bookmarks, not really that exciting, but quick and easy and handy when the menu is hidden.
My Windows 7 friends tell me that firefox 4 plays nicely with their OS giving them tab previews and jump lists.... I'm a mac user so I have no idea what they are talking about ;-) Would be interested in comments from anybody that does.
There is a new add-ons manager, but it currently looks incomplete. Looks promising though and it has some additional features for developers.
Firefox 4 supports HTML5 WebM videos which is an open source alternative to H.264. The important thing is that HTML5 video is supported. This means we do away with those pesky flash video players that more often than not cause our browsers to crash and burn.
I loaded up a few of the web applications that we use in our business and offer to our customers including: eiCRM (sugarCRM), eiERP (openbravo) and eiCollab (Zimbra). The speed was good and much much better than previous firefox versions. I have not been able to do testing to see how it compares to Chrome and other browsers but probably not worth doing until at least RC1 comes out.
So my overall impression is a thumbs up for this new browser and I certainly think it is worth a look. You can check out the release note HERE and if you are interested in downloading you can get it from HERE
More soon!
Firefox 4 supports HTML5 WebM videos which is an open source alternative to H.264. The important thing is that HTML5 video is supported. This means we do away with those pesky flash video players that more often than not cause our browsers to crash and burn.
I loaded up a few of the web applications that we use in our business and offer to our customers including: eiCRM (sugarCRM), eiERP (openbravo) and eiCollab (Zimbra). The speed was good and much much better than previous firefox versions. I have not been able to do testing to see how it compares to Chrome and other browsers but probably not worth doing until at least RC1 comes out.
So my overall impression is a thumbs up for this new browser and I certainly think it is worth a look. You can check out the release note HERE and if you are interested in downloading you can get it from HERE
More soon!
Cheers
