Firefox 4 Beta 4 Pulls Up Monday, GPU Rendering Still Incomplete

From DailyTech: On Monday Firefox 4's fourth beta will launch to testers worldwide, as Mozilla charges toward its upcoming major release. The browser's code was frozen on Thursday and is being finalized for release.

Firefox's improvements fall into three general categories -- looks, functionality, and speed.

In the looks department, the new build is expected to look much like the first Firefox 4 beta, which introduced the new Aero Glass look for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Noticeably absent from the new look's default appearance is the text menus of previous editions. Much of its functionality (such as the bookmarks menu) has been chopped and distributed to new locations around the new GUI. However, pressing the "Alt" key at any time will reveal the traditional text menu.

In the functionality department there's a number of improvements to tabbing, the software technology that's become the face of modern browsing. Starting with the previous betas the option to change a tab into an "app". This serves the duel purpose of shrinking commonly used tabs and allowing their organization based on purpose.

Another tabbing technology that landed in Firefox 4 beta 3 was the "switch to tab" option. This option's benefit is that you can quickly switch to open tabs via typing in the address bar. It also helps prevent unintentionally opening the same URL multiple times. However, this feature can be a bit obnoxious at times at it makes it harder to intentionally open multiple instances of a commonly visited site, as it removes the open tab from the autocomplete list.

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