Firefox 4 Download Available, Release Tomorrow

Mozilla will release the final version of the long awaited web browser Firefox 4 tomorrow. This ends an odyssey full of delays that began about nine months ago with the first beta release of Firefox 4. Nine months, that is the projected time that Mozilla will need for the next three major Firefox releases.

I have followed the development of the browser from pre-beta to the final release, and have to admit that it was not always a pleasant ride. It looked in the beginning as if the developers planned to make changes for the sake of changes, and not because they made sense or were demanded by the majority of the Firefox community.

Features like the new tab management module Panorama or the move to display mouse over link addresses in the address bar caused quite a stir among the community, and were disabled or changed in the end.

So what are the dominant new features that have been added to Firefox 4?

One can say that the new version improves the browser’s core considerably. The developers have made the Mozilla Firefox web browser faster, so that it does not take the rear ranks anymore in web browser benchmarks. The JavaScript performance alone has been improved by a factor of three (or more depending on the benchmark) when compared to the current stable Firefox 3 branch.

The version offers now comparable speeds to other fast browsers such as Internet Explorer 9, Opera or Google Chrome.

Firefox 4 comes with improved web standards support, including better CSS3, HTML5 and web graphics compatibility. Other notable features include hardware acceleration support, support for the HTML5 video WebM format, out of process plugins for Macs (Linux and Windows have it built-in since Firefox 3.6), privacy enhancements and multitouch support under Windows 7.

Interested users can access an overview, that compares the changes with previous Firefox browsers, on the Mozilla website.

As mentioned earlier, the Firefox interface has seen quite some changes. The dominating additions are the new Firefox button at the top of the browser that leads to most options of the menu bar. The menu bar has been removed as a result, and tabs have been moved above the Firefox address bar. Lastly, the status bar has been replaced and is now hidden by default.

Check out Firefox 4, How To Undo The Changes for instructions on how to revert the changes (get the old menubar back, move tabs below address bar, display status bar).

The add-on manager has been changed as well, it displays now in a tab instead of a standalone window. It is likely that some add-ons that have been working fine under Firefox 3 will not work under Firefox 4. You can try and force compatibility the following way:

Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar and hit the return key. Accept the warning message if this is your first time, and right-click on a blank spot afterwards. Select New > Boolean and enter the value extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0. Double-click the entry afterwards after clicking OK and change the value to false.

Firefox 4 Download

The final version has been pushed to the Mozilla ftp server where it is available for all supported operating systems and languages. It usually takes between 24 and 48 hours until the release is publicly announced on the Mozilla website. We do know however that Mozilla will announce the final release tomorrow, which is the time when downloads will become available on the web page.

The only option for now is to download the release from one of the official mirror sites (for instance this one) or from one of the big software portals. Softpedia for instance lists the download already on their download portal.

Outlook

The Firefox developers have already announced plans to ship a first patch shortly after the final release has been published on the website, as it is likely that the increase in users will reveal bugs that have not been discovered before. Plans overall are to release three new major releases in this year, which would mean a Firefox 7 release at the end of the year. Plans are plans on the other hand, and we have seen how delays can break them.

Related Articles:

Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday March 21, 2011 -
Tags:Firefox, firefox download, firefox release, firefox-update, mozilla-firefox

Responses so far:

1. Transcontinental says:

   March 21, 2011 at 11:45 am

   I think that what seems to be an general trend to bloat software includes most browsers, except Google Chrome perhaps (which I have not installed for other reasons (lack of options, basic ones!). Indeed, most users what availability of options rather than extended gadgets that most of the time are not even used by them. Software is maybe comparable to fashion, and users are more likely to wear “prêt-à-porter” than “haute couture” … I mean, even Opera is its new 11.10 beta is proposing a new layout of its SpeedDial which seems to bother most users who’ve tested it, once again as Martin stated, “as if the developers planned to make changes for the sake of changes”, applicable elsewhere than Fiirefox as well.

   Reply
2. vasa1 says:

   March 21, 2011 at 1:26 pm

   Good article with helpful links.

   Reply
3. Aravind says:

   March 21, 2011 at 4:19 pm

   Hi Martin,
   Thanks for the Download links as I could install Firefox 4 before the official release.

   Reply
4. ilev says:

   March 21, 2011 at 8:55 pm

   I just update version 4 over version 3.6.15. Got the old menu bar automatically.
   Some of the add-ons are not compatible yet : FEBE, Firedownload, Kaspersky url advisor, BetterSearch, Perspectives.

   Another problem, some of the add-ons icons like NoScript, WOT.. appear to the left of the url bar, and some like Adblock Plus, Home.. appear to the right of the url bar.

   Reply
5. no says:

   March 21, 2011 at 9:47 pm

   I just randomly was googling for the mozilla 4.0 planned release date to magically discover it was coming tomorrow. THen found out it was FTP available now. But then I checked my version to ensure I was still running 4.0b12 and . . . surprisingly, it has already automatically self-updated to 4.0 while I was a sleep. Awesome.

   Reply
6. Name says:

   March 22, 2011 at 1:16 am

   The best place to get it would realistically be from mozilla’s ftp:
   ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

   Reply
   • Martin Brinkmann says:

     March 22, 2011 at 1:17 am

     But the devs do not like direct links to the ftp.

     Reply
7. BalaC says:

   March 22, 2011 at 4:46 pm

   Now firefox 4 is officially available. Download starts :)

   Reply
8. shakib says:

   July 9, 2011 at 12:32 am

   i need this

   Reply