Firefox 4 New Features

Mozilla has released the latest version of their popular Firefox browser - Firefox 4. As expected, Firefox 4 is even better than it's predecessors. Many new features have been added to make browsing easier and safer. The best part, it appears Mozilla has listened to the needs of it's users, giving them the browser of their dreams. Here, we take a look at some of the new features you'll quickly fall in love with.

The Awesome Bar

No technical jargon here. The Awesome Bar lets you quickly access your favorite sites. When you type a word or term into the location bar, the autocomplete feature displays a list of possible URL matches. The matches are based upon your history, open tabs and bookmarks. As if this isn't a great enough feature, the Awesome Bar actually learns the more you use it. The more you use the bar, the better your results will be. You have full control over the Awesome Bar settings, including being able to set privacy settings if you don't want information to be listed in the bar.

New Interface

Though it's not an extremely major overhaul, the few interface changes are more than welcome. In previous versions, tabs were displayed below the address or location bar. Now tabs are located above the Awesome Bar (aka address bar). This makes for a cleaner appearance and easier organization.

Instead of menus listed across the top of the browser, the menu is now contained in a single button. A orange Firefox button, above your first tab, contains all your menu options. Mozilla continued with the single button theme by creating a single bookmark button. From this button, you can add, edit, organize and use bookmarks.

The home button has been relocated to the right of the search field. Another thing you may notice that's changed is the reload and stop buttons. One single button allows you to perform both functions and is located at the end of the Awesome Bar. The icon changes depending on the function currently available.

Improved Tabs

Tabs are one of the most useful features of any browser for anyone who needs multiple pages open at once. Now you can turn your most used sites and give them a permanent tab. These tabs are listed first and can even be set to open when you open Firefox 4.

The more tabs you have open, the harder it can be to keep up with them. Sometimes you end up opening the same page in multiple tabs. When you try to open a new page, Firefox checks to see if that page is already open in another tab. If so, the existing tab will open, preventing a new page from needing to load.

If you want more control over organizing your tabs, take advantage of Panorama. With Panorama, you can organize your tabs into groups. You can easily see which tabs are in which groups without a long list of tabs along the top of your browser.

Other Improvements

One of the major complaints with Firefox was browser crashes. When a plug-in crashes, Firefox 4 will no longer crash. Instead, the problem page will display an error, resulting in the page being refreshed. The best part of Firefox 4 is speed. The new version starts up faster, loads graphics more quickly and features a faster JavaScript engine. With Firefox 4, Mozilla focused on giving users more of what they want - speed, control and ease of use.

You can download the lastest version of Firefox from Mozilla .

References:

Firefox Features - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/