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New Firefox 4 beta debuts "App Tabs"

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 28 Jul 2010 at 11:23

Mozilla's next-generation Firefox browser has reached second beta, with a smattering of new features.

The most intriguing newcomer in the latest release is "App Tabs". When in web apps such as Hotmail or Google Calendar, users can right click on the open tab and shrink it to a small favicon, which will remain permanently docked on the far left of the screen.

It means users can easily flick between several web apps without them dominating the entire tabs bar, and is a similar concept to Windows 7's option of pinning apps to the taskbar.

Mozilla claims the App Tabs will be automatically opened every time you fire up the browser, although this didn't work in our tests.

Also new in Firefox 4 Beta 2 is support for CSS3 transitions. This allows web developers to make any HTML element - say a text box or an image - jump out of the page. Mozilla has provided a demonstration of the CSS3 transitions here.

Beta 2 also heralds the introduction of Firefox's somewhat controversial move to tabs at the top of browser window for users of the Mac OS X version. Windows users were treated to the new design in the first beta, but Linux users will have to wait until the next beta before they get the new look.

Firefox 4 beta 2 is available for download here.

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User comments

The menu button should be red

with a gray "O" artistically placed across it, so that it's slightly more obvious that they've re-invented Opera.
.
I'm using Opera 10.6 and it looks almost identical in every way. Only the slightly different back/forward buttons tell it apart.

By phantombudgie on 28 Jul 2010

Great Feature

Gotta say, not sure if its in Opera or not, but the App Tabs is a great and super useful feature!
It's probably one of the simplest and most useful features I've seen in ages.
If they added to that some type of equally as easy to use session management so I could close down millions of tabs when i was in the middle of doing them and then open them up again later to continue using them and I'd be back in love with my old fav before Chrome!

By nilathomas on 28 Jul 2010

You can get the same effect as App Tabs, by using the Pin Tab feature in Chrome.

Although have to say that Firefox 4 is shaping up nicely, especially on OS X, where it's a big improvement over 3.6.x.

By pbryanw on 28 Jul 2010

Saving groups of tabs is easy

@ nilathomas - You can press Ctrl+Shift+D or open the Bookmarks menu and click "Bookmark all tabs", this creates a bookmark that opens your current tabs; or you can set the browser to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" in Options| General|Startup|When Firefox starts, then just close Firefox with those tabs still open.

Seems easy enough to me.

By greenknight32 on 29 Jul 2010

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