10 highlights worth looking forward to in Firefox 4.0

Mozilla Firefox is following the pace of Google Chrome 10 and Microsoft IE9, and officially announced the release of the official version March 22 on January 1, 4.0. Within a few days, various major browsers have released official versions, mainly because users want to experience browsers that best suit their habits.

Earlier today, I spoke to Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla Firefox browser development director. Theme: what benefits does Firefox browser's final version bring to users? Next is some highlights of Firefox browser's official version 4.0.

1. Faster

With the new JS engine, the Firefox browser 4.0 can exert more expressive power. "The initial startup time, graphic rendering, and page loading speed have all been significantly improved," said Nightingale. In fact, in the Kraken, SunSpider, and V8 benchmark tests, Firefox 4.0 performs better than each previous version, with scores increasing by 3 to 6 times. GigaOM recently reported that Firefox surpassed Chrome 10, Opera 11.1, and IE9 In the Kraken Benchmark test. This proves that the speed improvement of Firefox is remarkable.

2. More clean

More effective and intuitive tabs increase the visual experience of Firefox 4. In addition to the newly added "tabs are always on the front-end ", firefox also provides special settings that make the interface simpler and smoother.

For example, to switch to the tag function, you can automatically call an existing link to reduce the number of duplicate pages opened. This reduces the amount of page browsing and clutter. After this feature is enabled, the number of pages that he browsed earlier is reduced to 5 or 60, said Nightingale.

As explained by Nightingale, browsing pages is the slowest. If you open 200 pages but cannot find one, this is why browsing is slow.

Of course, Firefox also has application tags to help users retain frequently accessed webpages, such as Gmail or Weibo, even if tab pages are closed, they can be retained forever. When a user opens the Firefox browser, no matter whether they have accessed these sites, they will always be on the left edge of the browser. Besides, the sidebar will prompt the latest trends of these websites, such as receiving new emails and Weibo users @ users.

When Firefox is restarted, it will open the activity page and application tag accessed for the first time, and then load other pages.

It is worth mentioning that Firefox 4.0 also integrates page buttons, which concentrate scattered buttons on one button bar for convenient access to each menu bar.

3. panoramic view

Panorama is a plug-in at first, while Firefox 4.0's new panorama is another purpose to organize messy tabs. After using it, the viewer can drag the page to the Management Group for orderly arrangement, naming, and management.

Compared with previous versions of Firefox, if you open 20 tabs consecutively, it is difficult to distinguish them. Some people may keep using "open in new windows", but this will make the desktop tray more messy.

On the other hand, panoramic browsing also provides a visual canvas, which allows you to divide tabs into groups such as work, home, interest, or research.

4. Synchronization

Another new feature of Firefox 4.0 is synchronization. If you register Firefox users, you can log on to Firefox of different platforms. This means that users can easily find the restaurant location on their computers at work and synchronize the location to Firefox Android mobile phones.

Nightingale believes that Firefox synchronization is of great help to users. Of course, in order to protect personal privacy, user information will not be intercepted before being transmitted to the network.

5. Do not track

Users of Firefox 4.0 can make sure that the browser sends a title to the website when requesting access to the webpage-user browsing behavior is unwilling to be tracked.

Theoretically, advertisers and websites will ignore such requests because they want to get business opportunities through browsers. In addition, it is not difficult to forcibly block advertisers and such websites. In terms of trust, it is not very helpful to forcibly prohibit them through technical means.

What Nightagle hopes is that advertisers and such websites can use new means to guide them in a way that respects and expresses the will of consumers. More and more people are using the "do not track" function when the Firefox test version is released. "

"I'm eager to see how the advertising network and content website respond to it," said Nightingale. With the launch of new technologies, "Your (advertisers, etc.) Interaction intention will be gradually understood ."

6. Background Functions

New features coming soon in Firefox 4.0: Support for videos in high-definition WebM format, 3D Images Using WebGL technology, animations presented in CSS3 languages, and support for multimedia. These functions are invisible to the user.

Of course, in Windows, Direct 2D and 3D graphics acceleration is supported, X rendering is enabled in Linux, and OpenGL is supported by default hardware in Mac.

7. Security improvement

Through strict transmission of security standards or HSTS in the HTTP protocol, the website can confirm that the information is always encrypted to prevent attackers from stealing sensitive information. In the past, hackers could potentially see netizens entering a bank's home page in a cafe. This was not encrypted, so hackers could hijack users here.

With the Content Security Policy (CSP), Firefox 4.0 ensures that cross-site scripting attacks do not affect the website, so it is not afraid to leave a message on the website.

The Firefox browser is open-source and is not provided by security vendors. On the contrary, Firefox security has been evaluated and improved over and over again.

8. HTML5

The new parser of Firefox 4.0 adds comprehensive support for HTML5 and network audio and video files, drag and drop, and file processing. It fully demonstrates its full support for the latest network.

9 multi-platform support

Although Microsoft IE9 can only be used for Windows systems (Vista and Windows 7), Firefox can be used for multiple operating platforms. Therefore, whether you are a Windows, Linux, or Mac user, you can experience the powerful new feature of Firefox 4.0.

10. community interaction

One of the features to be mentioned at the end is that, as Microsoft developed IE9, the payment team was enabled to help discover the quality browsers users wanted. Firefox has formed a certain group of users to help improve features. In fact, about 30%-40% of the Code is developed by the Mozilla community. In this form, it is difficult to understand what users need.

Editor's comment: After reading so many exciting new features, Firefox fans are definitely looking forward to the release of the official version 4.0. Let's speculate whether many Internet Explorer users will change their minds and switch to Firefox? I think users on Mac and Linux platforms may be waiting for the release of Firefox 4.0?