Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Pre Alpha 1 Review And Download

Mozilla Firefox is a browser that needs no introduction as these days, it's become the premiere choice web browser for many web surfers around the world. Initially released way back in November 9, 2004, Mozilla Firefox gained popularity quickly over main competitor Internet Explorer (IE) and other competitors like Opera and Netscape.

Firefox includes tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, and an integrated search system that uses the user's desired search engine. Functions can be added through add-ons created by third-party developers, the most popular of which include the NoScript JavaScript disabling utility, Tab Mix Plus customizer, FoxyTunes media player control toolbar, Adblock Plus ad blocking utility, StumbleUpon (website discovery), Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (bookmark synchronizer), DownThemAll! download enhancer, and Web Developer toolbar.

Today we will review the latest version of Mozilla Firefox - the version 4.0 alpha and compare it to it predecessor Firefox 3.xx.

The version 4.0 alpha has been code-named Minefield. Now let's have a look at the interface of Mozilla 3.xx and compare it with the 4.0 version.

Firefox 3

Now let's have a look at what Minefield looks like:

Firefox Minefield Logo

At first, there seems to be no difference in the interface. However, we can notice that the home button has been relocated. The "most visited" bookmark button has been placed into "Smart Bookmarks". The options and other interface seem to be same as Firefox 3.

However, under the hood the story is altogether different. Firefox Minefield has been upgraded with a blazing fast new javascript engine dubbed TraceMonkey. TraceMonkey has been bench marked and has given result which shows that it actually is 10% faster than Google Chrome (Powered by Javascript Engine V8)! This leaves Google Chrome biting dust.

Mozilla's Page For Minefield is here, but there seems no real download link for this built but fortunately I've got a copy and there's a Rapidshare link.

If you're a geek, you might want to check out how Minefield's TraceMonkey fares against Google Chrome V8 javascript engine here.

Since this is an alpha version, I presume that Mozilla Developers have only started to work on this version and hopefully will add plenty of new features in this release. If you want to test out Minefield, you can download it from Rapidshare here: Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Pre Alpha Download.

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