Mozilla issues Firefox 4 beta 10

Two weeks after releasing Firefox 4 beta 9, the Mozilla Project has issued a tenth beta for version 4.0 of its open source Firefox web browser. According to a post on the mozilla.dev.planning Google Group, the developers plan to release one more beta version, Firefox 4 Beta 11, before the end of the month; this will be followed by a release candidate in early February. The final release of Firefox 4 is expected to arrive "before the end of February".

Building on the previous development versions, the latest beta for Firefox 4 improves the browser's overall performance and stability. Changes include "improved memory usage, remote blacklisting for hardware acceleration and better Flash support for Mac OS X users."

Firefox 4 Beta 10 on Mac OS X. Firefox 4 is the non-profit organisation's next-generation web browser based on version 2.0 of the Gecko rendering platform (the Firefox 3.6 branch uses Gecko 1.9.2) and features a new Add-ons Manager and extension management API. Other changes include a new 'tabs on top' layout, the integration of Firefox Sync, formerly known as Weave, and various new features aimed at web developers.

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

More details about the tenth beta, including a list of known issues, can be found in the release notes and in the change log. Firefox 4 beta 10 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Alternatively, existing Firefox 4.0 beta users can upgrade to the new version, either by waiting for the automated update notification or by manually selecting "Check for updates" from the Help Menu.

Firefox binaries are released under the Mozilla Firefox End-User Software License Agreement and the source code is released under disjunctive tri-licensing that includes the Mozilla Public Licence, GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. The latest stable release is version 3.6.13, a security update that addressed a critical vulnerability, from early December.

See also:

• Mozilla releases first alpha for Camino 2.1 Mac web browser, a report from The H.
• Mozilla releases Thunderbird 3.3 Alpha 2, a report from The H.
• Firefox Creative Lead leaving Mozilla, a report from The H.

(crve)