Mozilla Firefox 4 review
A major area of competition between rival browser developers is performance which is more important than ever as we run more and more applications as cloud services through a browser. As expected Mozilla claims Firefox 4 is the fastest browser yet. In our tests, Firefox 4 was slightly quicker than Chrome 10 at loading web sites, including our own, but not quite as fast as Internet Explorer 9. This pattern held true in the widely-used SunSpider benchmark for testing JavaScript performance. In day-to-day use Firefox 4 didn't feel substantially faster, or noticeably slower, than any other modern browser.
Firefox 4 can even use your computer's graphics chip to speed up the rendering of animations and other graphically demanding page elements, although the company has yet to confirm which graphics chips are officially supported.
On a laptop with an Intel GMA 4500M HD integrated graphics chip, Firefox 4 managed a fast 35fps in Microsoft's fish tank animation test with 50 fish onscreen. Chrome 10 was slower, but still smooth, at 25fps while Internet Explorer 9 lagged behind at a sluggish 13fps. The GMA 4500M HD is a widely used chip, so Mozilla's rivals still have some work to do, but it's still early days for hardware accelerated browsing.
A modest but useful improvement is the refined interface for finding, installing and managing the multitude of add-ons available. It uses a larger window that makes better use of the available screen space. Many add-ons will need to be updated by their developers before they'll work with Firefox 4, but the browser automatically disables incompatible ones anyway.
Users of multiple computers may appreciate Firefox Sync which lets you sychronise your bookmarks, history, open tabs and other settings between multiple computers running Firefox 4. It's not a new feature, having previously been available as an optional add-on for previous versions. An intriguing option is the ability to run your own Firefox Sync server if you'd rather not have sensitive business data and settings passing through Mozilla's servers for compliance or commercial reasons.
Privacy-conscious users will be attracted to Firefox's ability to stop websites and advertising networks from tracking them as they browse from site-to-site. However, this feature relies on websites and advertising networks respecting the user's wishes – unethical websites and ad providers could still track the user. If you still want to enable this feature, it's tucked away in an obscure corner of the Options dialog box.
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