Today’s a big release day over at Mozilla. First it was a new version of the email client Thunderbird that has still not been announced officially. As of this minute, the Mozilla servers are being filled with new Firefox 4.0 Beta 5 releases. The distribution has not been completed yet, and it is likely that it will take at least a few hours before the official announcement is being made over at the Mozilla website.
So what’s new in the latest Firefox 4 beta? The add-on manager has been redesigned with a new color scheme. The functionality on the other hand seems to have remained the same. Still no option to search for and install add-ons from the manager.
add-on manager
Hardware acceleration should be enabled by now by default, at least on Windows. A new setting has been added to the browser’s options to disable hardware acceleration. you find it in Tools > Options > Advanced > Use Hardware Acceleration When Available.
hardware acceleration
Finally, the new single menu at the top has been revamped. It opens additional menus when the user hovers with the mouse over an arrow at the end a particular menu item.
firefox 4 menu
The menu is actually not as intuitive as it looks like on first glance, as it happens that submenus pop up accidentally whenever the mouse cursor moves over an arrow icon. Keep in mind though that you can return to the old menu structure, or display it temporarily by pressing Alt.
Firefox 4 Beta 5 will be available later today. Users who do not want to wait that long can download it from the Mozilla ftp server, or wait until the download portals have uploaded the new version to their servers.
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Having hardware acceleration enabled made the text extremely blurry and difficult to read on my notebook. (Acer Aspire 5738PG-6306, ATI Radeon HD 4570)
Anyone else having this issue? Turning it off brings it back to normal.