Mozilla browser finished: How good is the Firefox 4

Now finally official: Mozilla has, after several earlier versions, the final version of Firefox 4 for download. In the practical test of COMPUTER BILD reveals the browser to its potential.

Fresh Browser-look

After a long test phase, the team of Mozilla-designer Alex Faaborg has set: the individual tabs in Firefox 4 walk up there and should provide more clarity when browsing - Chrome, and Opera IE9 use this arrangement already. Friends of the old designs to make the placement with a few clicks. Instead of using classic menu bar, you control all future options to save space on a color-highlighted button. The old view is also selectable.

Firefox with hardware and 3D acceleration

Since the fifth beta version of Firefox is capable of calculations for the first time the graphics card mitzunutzen addition to the processor. Compute-intensive web pages load it thanks to the graphic interface "DirectX 10 " (Windows) and OpenGL (Mac OS X) appreciably faster. The hardware acceleration on Windows Vista and Windows 7 active immediately after installation. Whether the GPU acceleration works on your PC, you test it by typing about: support in the address bar of Firefox 4th Immersed in the graphic entry "1 / 1 Direct3D 10", you benefit from the added performance. Thanks to the technology "WebGL"it is from beta 7 is possible, without plug-play 3D content into the browser.

Finished version: fast, but no speed record

                        SunSpider    V8 Suite  Acid3-Test
Internet Explorer 9      0,23          2.418     92
Firefox 4 (final)        0,25          4.045     97
Opera 11                 0,27         3.796      100     
Chrome 10                0,28          8.947     100
Safari 5                 0,35          2.647     100
Firefox 3.6.13           0,80          574       94
Internet Explorer 8      6,42          72        20

Firefox users had in the past few months to see how the competition much more upbeat browser ready for download. With the pre-release versions of Mozilla Firefox 4 found another connection and the speed increased significantly. Compared to the Firefox 3.6 is ready for the Mozilla browsers more than three times as fast. Looking up, the Firefox 4, but compared to the IE9.

The benchmarks and V8 SunSpider test the speed of the browser in the presentation of JavaScript. The Acid3 test analyzes the conformity to current Internet standards. In Acid3 and V8 means a higher value (in points) a better outcome in SunSpider reflects a lower value (in seconds) of a faster browser. Depending on the hardware, the results to the benchmarks differently. The COMPUTER BILD-Test-PC: An iMac with Windows 7 (32 bit), Intel Core 2 Duo E7600, Nvidia Geforce 9400 M

More overview of new panorama feature

Press the Ctrl, Shift and E keys simultaneously, you get to the panorama mode. Firefox summarizes all open tabs into groups. Using drag and drop (left mouse button pressed drag hold and release) to create groups. By clicking on the magnifying symbol to open a preview. The new feature provides greater clarity and is primarily aimed at users who open the same time very many tabs. Windows 7: The operating system recognizes these groups, the view of the tab previews is therefore completely - regardless of the created groups.

Conclusion: Mozilla Firefox 4

A confirmation of the Mozilla developers: With new "jaeger monkey" engine and optimized "WebGL" technique of Firefox 4 significantly faster than its predecessor 3.6, and on par with their browsers from Microsoft and Google. The hardware acceleration through the graphics processor and the native representation of 3D content pave the way for the Firefox 4 graphically complex Web sites. The new design and the modified arrangement of the elements available to the Firefox browser to shame.