Jared W. Smith

I’m writing this within Firefox 4, Beta 9. So far, so good — Firefox does seem significantly faster over the 3.x versions, and has already withstood a Flash crash without dumping the entire browser, indicating that the sandboxing work Mozilla has done is performing well. The UI has had quite a makeover, drawing a lot of inspiration from Chrome (including pinned app tabs, tabs on top, etc.). Interestingly, there is no status bar anymore — everything seems to happen in the address bar (including showing the target of the link you’re hovering over). Yes, the RSS indicator is gone by default, but it can be added back by customizing the toolbar (though having a dead button there is not as elegant as the previous solution). Overall, so far so good for Firefox 4. Big caveat: Most extensions aren’t working yet. If you want to try it, go for it, but be aware that you won’t have your extensions until they are updated (including Firebug for the moment, though support is coming in the next beta). I’m not sure yet if this latest Firefox is enough to pry me away from Chrome, but it has come together really well, and kudos to Mozilla for that.