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.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
8 responses to “Firefox 4 For Mac Now Available For Download”
“If you can see all the numbers, they all go to eleven.”
“Why don’t you just make it 10 and make that a little louder?”
…pause…
“These go to eleven.”
By that logic, I would pick Opera 11. :-D
Which just happens to be the best browser around… (Start the flame wars!!!!)
I just downloaded Firefox 4
and I am not really sure what makes this better than 3.6
except the group tabs
Need to go back to 4 on Mac because of Blackboard and Angle for three schools I teach at. The botton only brings up a larger image, not a download. Why?