Mozilla firms up Firefox 4 plans

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 11 May 2010 at 08:18

Mozilla has given a breakdown of its plans for Firefox 4, including a pledge to make it "super-duper fast".

Perhaps the most striking change to Firefox 4 is the user interface, which takes a great deal of inspiration from Google Chrome. Though Mozilla was keen to note that the mockups shown in the presentation were subject to change, it's clear Firefox 4 will benefit from the design choices made by Google's pared-back browser.

"Something UI designers have known for a long time is that the simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem," said director of Firefox Mike Beltzner during the presentation.

"The less the user has to take in with their eye, the quicker they can process it and the quicker the entire application will seem. So we're actually looking at making our interface faster by changing the way it looks."

To that end, Mozilla plans to strip away many of the user interface controls currently cluttering Firefox. Beltzner acknowledged the move was likely to lead to protests from the community, but claimed "tough choices" had to be made.

Also mooted was the ability to give applications such as Gmail and Twitter their own permanent tabs for easy access, and the introduction of a "switch to tab" button, allowing power users running hundreds of tabs to quickly find the one they want.

This desire to simplify navigation in Firefox 4 was evident throughout the presentation. Dialogue boxes - including those requesting geolocation or other data - will appear as bubbles specific to individual tabs, meaning you can continue to navigate around the browser without being locked down until you've answered.

Beltzner said Mozilla was also looking at replicating Chrome's tactic of silently updating the browser in the background, removing the annoying wait when Firefox first loads up.

Under the hood, Firefox 4 will benefit from a new permissions manager that will dictate which information the browser can share with websites. This will include geolocation data, and their ability to access local storage - both key aspects of HTML5, which will find broad support within the browser.

More intriguingly, the permissions manager will allow users to apply these settings to websites on an individual basis.

Beltzner further confirmed that Firefox 4 will take advantage of the Jetpack API, which allows developers to create adds-ons using web technologies including HTML, CSS and JavaScript. According to Mozilla, add-ons created in Jetpack won't break every time the browser receives a major overhaul - at a stroke removing one of Firefox's biggest irritations.

Firefox 4 also looks likely to benefit from hardware acceleration - potentially stealing Internet Explorer 9's thunder - multitouch support, and deeper integration with Aero Peek and OS X.

Mozilla has slated Firefox 4 for release in November.