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Firefox 4 Beta Finally Released with New Interface

By Norman Chan

It's here!

Just a week after the pre-beta candidate hit the web, Mozilla has released the first official beta for Firefox 4, feedback button and all. This hotly anticipated release is currently for (Edit: Out on all platforms, but only Windows gets the new UI), and sports the Chrome-like tab system (tabs on top, instead of hanging below), a revamped add-ons manager, plus HTML5 and WebM video support. Features still to come include bookmark and history syncing, better privacy controls, and JavaScript optimizations. That means you should take speed comparisons between this beta and Chrome 5 or Opera 10.60 with a grain of salt, though Mozilla devs have their work cut out for them if they want to match those browsers' impressive performance. Download the beta for yourself and let us know what you think!

Here's a feature comparison between Firefox 3.5, 3.6, and 4 beta. Thanks to @fwylo for the heads up!