Today Mozilla will release the 11th beta release of Firefox 4.0. The most notable features of Beta 11 are:
- Support for the proposed Do Not Track (“DNT”) header
- Connection status messages are now shown in a small overlay
- WebGL has been re-enabled on Linux
- The default homepage design has been refreshed
- Firefox no longer switches into offline mode automatically
The Do Not Track feature is an important one because it shows Mozilla’s interest in protecting the privacy of Firefox users. The DNT feature is not a standard, however, and it does not work unless websites obey the wishes of the user. Since many websites use various methods of tracking user behavior there will certainly be some resistance to this proposal. In the end I believe it’s best that the web ecosystem ultimately respects the rights and wishes of users.
The connection status messages are now displayed in an overlay at the bottom left of the screen. This is very similar to how Google Chrome displays both connection status and URL previews. I’m not sure what the final implementation will be for Firefox. Currently in Beta 11, only connection status is displayed in the overlay while URL previews are displayed on the right side of the Awesomebar.
I’m glad to see that WebGL is still being pushed to Linux. Although, graphics drivers on Linux are not an easy thing to deal with. Both of the major graphic card companies, AMD (ATI), and NVIDIA make proprietary graphics drivers for Linux. NVIDIA is far superior in the quality of their Linux drivers as well as the frequency of releases. But I digress. Suffice to say that I can’t blame Mozilla for blacklisting drivers and cards on Linux. They will only want WebGL to be enabled on machines where the quality and stability of WebGL in Firefox will be good to excellent. Nothing less.
I worked with the QMO team last Friday to verify the bugs that have been fixed since Beta 10. Everyone did a great job and we had a lot of fun testing things out for Mozilla. Anthony Hughes wrote up a nice review of the Bugday here.
I still think Mozilla has a ways to go in order to get Firefox 4 ready for prime time. With the long list of new features like Panorama, the UI redesign, Firefox Sync, and the 2.0 release of the Gecko rendering engine they have a lot to do. The overall performance and polish of the browser needs to improve a bit more before it’s really done in my opinion.
On Linux I’ve had the most trouble with Firefox 4. Compared to Windows and OS X, it is a bit slower to respond to user interaction with the UI. For example, opening and closing tabs, rearranging tabs, or clicking between tabs feels clunky at best. Panorama, while it has made great strides, is still very buggy. On Linux it’s slow to respond to user interaction and stutters when it zooms in and out. I’ve noticed that Firefox 4 on Ubuntu looks pretty good, but on all other flavors of Linux it looks absolutely terrible. I can’t get over how mundane it looks on KDE on Fedora. Thank God for Personas!
Overall: Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 is an excellent web browser. I highly recommend this beta to anyone who is interested in what Mozilla has cooking. Firefox is now, and will continue to be, my primary web browser. I feel a great deal of energy, dedication, and excitement in the Mozilla leadership that Firefox will have an amazing journey in 2011. Enjoy!!
Complete list of changes since the previous beta
