Firefox 4.0b7

Meet the new, seventh beta version of the fourth Firefox. I will translate its main differences from the previous beta version, set out in the release notes (you can also download a new beta there):

• JägerMonkey is used - a new and faster version of the javascript interpreter. The Mozilla Russia forum provided the following bar charts comparing its performance with previous versions:
  
  
  
• WebGL support is enabled by default on Windows and Mac OS X, although it relies for the time being that the graphics subsystem of the computer understands OpenGL. Support for other video cards under Windows (especially those produced by Intel), as well as support for Linux, has been postponed until one of the subsequent beta versions.
  
• Some rendering operations will be hardware accelerated using Direct3D 9 on Windows XP, Direct3D 10 on Windows Vista and 7, and OpenGL on Mac OS X.
  
• Typography of the browser now includes support for a number of OpenType features : ligatures, kerning, font options.
  
• The implementation of the HTML5 Forms API will simplify the creation of forms and validation of their filling.

From myself I will add that all this is only the most noticeable to the user and the web developer, but far from the only changes in the new version.

Here is the most important change among those that are not mentioned there: Vladimir Palant (the developer of the most popular Adblock Plus extension) on October 18 noticed in his blog that the new Firefox beta uses separate storage of javascript objects belonging to different domains; This measure should speed up the garbage collection by the javascript interpreter (which means reduce unwanted pauses in the operation of dynamic pages), and also simplifies implementation and enhances the reliability of security measures that separate DOM (object document models) in different domains from each other. However, this measure also separates the DOM pages more strongly from chrome (browser interface), so extensions have become a bit difficult to get to the page as before.
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It is very likely that not only Adblock Plus, but many other previous Firefox extensions that relied on the former (somewhat simpler) method of chromium interaction with the page, will now completely stop working until their authors release new versions that take into account the change that occurred. If the extension is left (abandoned, abandoned) by the author, so that the author doesn’t blow about updates, you can forget about this extension in Firefox 4, and accept my condolences.

In addition, the status bar disappeared from the browser: now the address of hyperlinks when hovering is shown in the address bar (usually at the top of the window), and all the extensions that showed icons on it now show them in a special panel (“Add-on Bar” ).

If this change is not to your liking, you can recreate the status line on the “Add-on Bar” using the “ Status-4-Evar ” extension. It also allows you to select the relative position of the status and icons of other extensions (but not icons relative to each other, unfortunately) and place in the address bar a bar indicating the percentage of page load. (For Tab Mix Plus users, it will not come in handy, probably: the latest Tab Mix Plus dev assemblies already display a similar indicator on the spine of each tab separately.)