HANDS ON: Firefox 4 Beta

Last week, the fourth version of arguably the Internet’s favourite browser, Firefox (yes, CEOs of companies still using IE6 – there is another), entered the open-beta phase of development and users and Mozilla fans were quick off the mark to download. Since its release, I’ve been using it and I have to say, I’m impressed.

Immediately obvious is a striking overhaul of the GUI to bring it in line with more modern browsers, and taking more than a little inspiration from rival, Chrome.

Modernizing the visual aesthetic to a frankly flagging behind browser in terms of design quality was evidently high up on their list, and honestly, it’s a welcome change. If you’re going to be staring and working out of something for hours on end, you want it to be an appealing, engaging environment, and in this current build, it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

It does take some getting used to, mind. Then again, personally, this is coming off of the back of using the browser pretty much exclusively for the last couple of years.

The whole re-design seems intrinsically revolved around a reduced amount on on-screen real estate; making use of the space you’ve got. By default, there are no other toolbars visible save for the Navigation, which for the purposes of the beta contains a feedback button that drops down and presents you with the quirkily worded “Firefox Made Me Happy Because…” and “Firefox Made Me Sad Because…”.

Everything is much more compact, refined, allowing for a more flowing browsing experience, unimpeded by clutter. Now, the standard menu toolbar is found behind the new Firefox button. You can’t miss it. What with the orange. In hindsight, it just makes sense to have all your options under one button. Saving more space, the Reload and Stop buttons have been merged into one with the respective commands available when the other is activated. If you’re not a fan, the options are there for you to toggle between a pseudo-classic theme that returns the positions of the toolbars to neutral; but to get to it, you’ll have to press the big orange button of doom. Or you could just right click anywhere on the Navigation bar and do it that way.

Bookmarks are now handled by a single starred folder icon to the right of the Google search bar, again saving space, and can be configured and managed in much the same way as of the current 3.6 browser. Though, if you’ve got a hefty amount of links, it can become a bit crowded, then again, that’s nothing new, and the bookmarks sidebar looks the best bet.

Taking a leaf out of Chrome’s book, tabs have been relocated to above the Awesome Bar – I know, I still can’t get used to calling it that. In the beta, you can switch between open tabs from within your address – sorry, “Awesome Bar”, by starting to type the name of the page currently open in the tab; though why you wouldn’t just click on the actual tab above is beyond me.

When loading websites, the favicon gets replaced by a sort of egg timer, or as I like to think, a Pac Man dying and eating itself, which does handily offer a better representation of how much the page is loaded. This is especially handy when you want to know when a tabbed page is ready for viewing. With this addition, I don’t see why the bar at the bottom of the window hasn’t been removed altogether. The majority of the time it just sits there idly displaying “Done” which we know as we’re viewing a fully loaded page. It just seems redundant and countermands the “less is more” design. Sure it shows the URL of a moused-over link, but the same could be easily achieved with a rendered hovering bubble.

Though the majority of the new design is available across all OS’s, the new tabs is currently only enabled for those on Windows 7 and Vista, with further compatibility namely for OSX and Linux to be implemented in later beta builds, which Mozilla have said to expect every two weeks.

“Under the Hood”, as they put it, there have been considerable improvements; the biggest being future-proofing for HTML 5 and CSS3. With the support there, it paves the way for all the soon-to-be goodness of watching web video, listening to audio and drag and dropping, greater page designs and coding flexibility and much more functionality to come from the two next web standards.

Also added is a new Crash Protection feature that claims to provide “uninterrupted browsing… when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apply Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.” I’ve not yet been able to force a crash like I can do with 3.6, which I suppose is a good sign or the kinks being worked upon in development, but what this means for the user is those annoying crashes that literally kicks you back to the desktop simply won’t anymore. Instead, the embedded plugin will crash without crashing the entire program. All you need do is to reload the page and the plugin will be restarted and ready to go round two.

The new add-on manager has been given a temporary makeover, but what you see in the current build is not what you’ll see in the final release, as Mozilla have said.

They state in the “Coming Soon” section that in future builds they’ll be improving and optimising the browser to further increase speed, but honestly, I don’t know how they’ll do it as it’s a spritely one as it is.

For me, the most surprising feature of the beta? Inbuilt spellchecker. No more add-ons, it’s native. Happened upon it and was taken aback. Had to make sure I wasn’t in Safari, too.

For a first build, the fourth generation Firefox already looks – both on the surface and beneath the hood – to be pretty solid with a lot of polish normally reserved for later stages down the line. It’s promising and definitely worth a look.

You can download and take the beta for a test-drive yourself, and find more information here.