Firefox 4: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The first betas of Firefox 4 are out, and for your knowledge, here are the good, bad or ugly features listed.

The bad:

• Not too bad things; they can be deactivated or will be fixed through time.
  
• Lots of extensions won't work until they're adapted by the developers.
  
• The interface changes will confuse you for some time and don't represent better productivity for you in most cases.

The good:

• Lots of new features that have to do with 3D on the web and CSS3 and HTML5, and prepare your browser for the next semantic web, prettier websites and 3D on all pages that want it.
  
• The Add-on manager opens in a full new tab -instead of a tiny window.
  
• Full support for HTML5 to build real-time interactive web apps
  
• Web developers can use Websockets for a low complexity, low latency, bidirectional communications API.
  
• support for new CSS3 features, making websites display faster and look prettier
  
• new SDK that helps developers create Firefox add-ons more easily.
  
• When there is a crash in Flash, Silverlight or Quicktime, Firefox will stop them but don't crash the browser.
  
• Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time. Expect X3D and WebGL solutions more often used in websites.
  
• Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.

The ugly:

• What is the reason to put everything inside a button when people tend to buy the biggest monitor they can? Why confuse us all with constant interface changes?
  
• Tabs are now on top of the address bar by default.
  
• Big orange button on the top left corner. This button opens a drop-down menu that replaces the standard toolbar menus.
  
• The Bookmarks bar is now also a button placed on the right side of the interface.

If you want to test Firefox 4, get it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

-Jordi R. Cardona-

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