Firefox 4.0: First Look With Tech Digit

Aug 5, 2009 by Tech-Digit

Mozilla Labs has declared that they is presently working for a huge development for Firefox 4, which would include features that were not seen in Firefox 3, but will definitely be seen in the Firefox 4. They also released Screenshots of upcoming FireFox 4.

Beard also mentioned that his lab is currently testing some other ideas as well, but Weave and Prism would be included in the next version of Firefox.

Latest Developments :

Recent rumors and leakage suggest that Firefox is on a dilemma to choose between 2 basic designs : “Tabs-On-Bottom” and “Tabs-On-Top”. Tabs-On-Bottom is the present custom in FF and Tabs-On-Top looks somewhat like the Chrome browser.

Tabs on Bottom:

Tabs on Top:

Mozilla had also done its homework properly. It had evaluated the merits and demerits of both the layouts.

The positives include :

Mouse distance to page controls is reduced, vertical space is saved, visual complexity is removed (until now the tabs had to be connected to something, so an extra visual element is added for the users to connect to).

And some of the negative points include : Mouse distance to page controls is increased, space is lost (placed in between the application icon and the window widgets makes the user lose some space), consistency is broken (since shifting things would confuse the present users), truncated version in tab (which means that the space from the title bar is removed).

Some more new features in FireFox 4 :

FF 4 includes some new features which include : Combo Stop/Refresh/Go Button. Instead of different buttons for each of them, all of the functionalities are included in one button. It would even change its color based on user actions. So if a user is typing it would be a Go button (Green), and if the page is loading, then the button would change to Stop (Red).

All the above facts mentioned in this article are based on the feedback from the Firefox community. And we bet that we are yet to see some more innovative features from Mozilla Firefox.