Whether you’re using Mac, Windows or Linux, Firefox can probably be found somewhere in your system. Just days after Mozilla released Firefox 7, the group is making the beta version of its upcoming product, Firefox 8, available to the general public today.
Ever since the release of Firefox 4, Mozilla began issuing more frequent updates to its browser, yet none of them have contained any significant feature enhancements. Firefox 8, while still identical to its closest predecessors, finally brings some new features to the table, which, albeit not revolutionary, make the experience of using the browser much more appealing – perhaps even to those who have long switch to browsers such as Chrome or Opera.
The main enhancements included in this release are related to the management of tabs, which now more useful than ever, as users now multitask more than ever before. For the benefit of heavy multitaskers, it’s now possible for open tabs to only be loaded when they’re selected. For users who often save their sessions, the browser will continue displaying all previously open tabs, yet it will only load them once they’re in use. This change, which will greatly improve startup times, can be toggled through Firefox’s "Options" window:
In addition, Firefox 8 now has Twitter search built into its search feature by default, making it easier to search for tweets inside the social network. If you’re an avid Twitter user, you’ll likely enjoy this change, but it probably won’t be a decisive feature if you’re thinking of switching to Firefox. Nonetheless, Twitter is becoming increasingly becoming popular, so it’s good to see Twitter more deeply integrated.
In addition to new feature, Firefox 8 includes the usual technology and engine upgrades, such as support for addition HTML5 technologies. There are also said to be across the board performance improvements.
Download Firefox 8 Beta:
Check out some of the other changes below:
- Add-ons installed by third party programs are now disabled by default
- Added a one-time add-on selection dialog to manage previously installed add-ons
- Improved performance and memory handling when using <audio> and <video> elements
- Added CORS support for cross-domain textures in WebGL
- Added support for HTML5 context menus
- Added support for insertAdjacentHTML
- Improved CSS hyphen support for many languages
- Improved WebSocket support
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