The Mozilla Foundation has resign an early beta of the upcoming version 4 of Firefox , its flagship grouchy - platform web browser for Windows , OS X , and Linux .
The long - awaited liberation introduces a routine of improvements and additions over former reading of Firefox . Firefox 3 came out two year ago , while edition 3.5 of the Web internet browser debut in 2009 .
hypertext markup language 5 and CSS 3 , the standard that are slated to power next - generation Websites , are clear at the cutting edge of Mozilla ’s development efforts . Firefox 4 include extended backup for many of the new feature that those two engineering introduce , including the Websocket API , which enables Web - base program to access server using arbitrary protocols like , for representative , the one used by e - postal service clients .
Most interestingly , Mozilla has prefer to support HTML 5 video playback by implement Google ’s WebM picture codec , which , like Firefox , is receptive - root and ( at least in possibility ) unencumbered by patent . The non - profit has made it clear in the past that it has no purpose of supporting H.264 , a competing format backed by companies like Apple and Microsoft and currently certify under a royal line - liberal scheme by the MPEG - LA Consortium .
According to afact sheet print on Firefox ’s Website , the new web browser app also includes significant public presentation enhancements , such as support for hardware acceleration and a proficiency , called “ lazy material body construction , ” that determine the circumstances under which certain HTML military operation trigger a reflowing of a web document , thus speeding up the rendering of dynamic Web pages .
On the guard and security fronts , Firefox 4 introduces bear forout - of - process plugins(OOPP ) on OS X for the first time . OOPP , a proficiency also implemented by Safari , isolate plugins from the main internet browser outgrowth so that they can crash without taking down Firefox with them . Mozilla has also added a fresh technology calledContent Security Policy , which lets Web developer specify how their pages interact with capacity from other knowledge base in an effort to palliate certain security department vulnerability .
Despite its many enhancements , it ’s worth observe that Firefox is still of early - beta quality — meaning that it will crash and behave in unexpected ways oftentimes enough that it ’s improbable to work well as your Clarence Shepard Day Jr. - to - day browsing companion . Still , for those who require to check out what Mozilla has in memory board , it can bedownloaded directly from the foundation ’s Website .
