Firefox 4.0b7

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

• Used by JägerMonkey - a new and faster version of the javascript interpreter. The Mozilla Russia forum presented 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 on the fact that the computer's graphics subsystem understands OpenGL. Support for other Windows graphics cards (especially those made by Intel), as well as Linux support, has been postponed to one of the next 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.
   
• Implementing the HTML5 Forms API will simplify the creation of forms and validation of their completion.

I’ll add from myself 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 from those that are not mentioned there: Vladimir Palant (developer of the popular Adblock Plus extension) on October 18 noticed in his blog that the new Firefox beta uses separate storage of javascript objectsbelonging to different domains; this measure should speed up “garbage collection” many times by the javascript interpreter (and, therefore, reduce unwanted pauses in the operation of dynamic pages), and also simplifies the implementation and enhances the reliability of those security measures that separate the DOM (document object models) from different domains. However, this measure more strongly separates the DOM of the page from the chrome (browser interface) as well, so it became a little more difficult for extensions to get to the page as before.

It is very likely that not only Adblock Plus, but also many other previous Firefox extensions, such as those that relied on the previous (somewhat simpler) method of chrome interaction with the page, will now completely stop working until their authors release new versions that take into account the change that has taken place. If the extension is left (abandoned, abandoned) by the author, so that the author doesn’t blow about updates, then 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 those extensions that showed icons on it now show them in a special panel (“Add-on Bar” )

If this change is not to your liking, then you can recreate the status bar 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 a bar in the address bar, an indicator of the percentage of page load. (It’s probably not useful for Tab Mix Plus users, probably: the latest Tab Mix Plus dev assemblies already display a similar indicator on the spine of each bookmark separately.)