Two and half years after the last major version, Mozilla has finally released Firefox 4 for Mac, PC and Linux, bringing dramatic speed and performance enhancements, improved HTML5 support, increased customizability, improved security, a while new interface and cross-platform syncing features to the world’s second most popular browser.
Even though it has taken more than two years for Firefox 4 to creep out the door, Firefox 5 should be coming relatively soon: Mozilla has said that they want to release Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 by the end of 2011 as they adopt a more Chrome-like rapid release schedule.
The impetus to catch up in version numbers with the likes of Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera and Safari are doubtlessly part of it, too: although Firefox is about as advanced as any other browser on the market, the lower version number risks the perception of being less advanced. If you knew nothing about web standards and security, which browser would you pick: Chrome 10, Internet Explorer 9, Safari 5 or Firefox 4? Exactly.
Firefox 4 is a free download, clocking in at around 27 megabytes. You can download it here.
