Firefox 4 Beta Created 14 years ago2010-07-07 12:12:30 UTC by satchmo

Firefox 4 beta is out.

It basically copied many features from Chrome and renamed it Firefox.

I am glad that I've been using Chrome all along, because it's way ahead of its time.

Can we download it?

Wow, that Firefox menu button in the corner is a feature Opera implemented several versions ago.

I think the differences between these browsers is going to keep shrinking.

I agree Strider

Tab contained crashing looks pretty nice though.

As long as it's not IE6 or 7, I'm happy.

Actually, fuck IE8 too. God damn.

Eventually, every browser is going to look like whatever Google makes.

I use both chrome and FF so i'm good with whatever.
Whenever either one of them gets finicky for whatever reason, I'll switch for a few weeks.

It's ironic that everybody who loves firefox and stuff always goes "oh all google does is take existing stuff, do something with it, then call it theirs", i fail to see how firefox is so innovative.

Man... The button in the corner is the EXACT same size as opera, the exact same position, same dropdown icon...

Only difference is they changed the text.

Uhh, what? All browsers copy each other. Chrome, Firefox, and Opera have all copied other browser's features at one point. One browser innovates, the rest follow. There is no "one browser" that does all the "innovation".

There is no "stealing features" - if one browser has a good idea, it's only logical that other browsers will want to take advantage of that idea. Only douchebags at Microsoft or something would claim that other browsers are "stealing" their features. Do you even understand the idealogy behind free software? (Opera isn't technically free as in speech, but whatever)

As for the button in the corner that you think is "stolen" from Opera, consider where Opera got the idea from. Have you ever used Windows 7? The button is for Win7 only, and that's because many Win7 applications use that style of button.

^ QFT. Whining about innovative-ness in browsers is pretty futile. Competition, and healthy inspiration, is nothing but good for the users -- it drives developers to improve their products, and the general browser experience grows better and better across all browsers.
A trend that has been growing amongst browser developers has been to increasingly adopt web standards, something I'm very happy about as a web developer. Even browsers that were reluctant to do so before are even implementing future features, such as parts of HTML5 and CSS3. Reminds me of the browser wars of the 90's, except this time browser developers actually follow standards instead of just making up features (I'm looking at you,

<blink>

and

<marquee>

). Huzzah!

Regarding Google, I remain suspicious of their market strategy. They're working hard to expand their increasing dominion over a lot of matters regarding the web and technology in general, and I'm not sure it's something I like, considering Google's policies (or should I say, non-existing policies) about personal data harvesting and storing. Google is still a corporation, and as such are always most interested in making money.

One issue that is of particular concern to me is the development of the embedded video standard. Browser vendors have yet to agree on a standard video codec to use (or allow) regarding video embedding - Mozilla is pushing for the free and open-source Theora (ogg) codec, while other browsers are looking at implementations h.264. The problem is that h.264 is a patented standard, meaning you have to dish out a lot of cash to implement a h.264-based codec in your browser - this means, if h.264 comes a dominant web practice, that new browsers will have an incredibly hard time making it on the browser market. Only the big companies, able to afford patents, will be able to put out useable web browsers -- that would be very sad. You can read up on this issue on this guy's blog (there is an article on mozilla.org somewhere, but I can't seem to dig it up.)

I agree with what you're saying, Zombie, except for one detail - the codecs. Google, Opera, Mozilla and several other software and also hardware companies like AMD, ARM and NVIDIA have announced their support for WebM. Internet Explorer 9 will be able to play WebM (which is basically VP8 video and Ogg Vorbis audio in a Matroska-inspired container) with the right codecs installed. I think most web developers will forget about Ogg Theora within a few months. The fight will be between WebM and H.264.

Oh, nice. I'd never heard of it, thanks for enlightening me. Well, that brings some positive news to the browser market.

Wow. Its chrome only its not.

--

Actually i take back what I've said, been so long since I've used firefox i fail to realize that the 'UI' I've been discussing is just a standard ui, but i use chrome which doesn't really use this so i assumed, sorry.