Mozilla released the first maintance update of Firefox 4, addressing the escaped rough edges of the new release. Therefor the changelog is simple, but to the point

• Fixed several security issues
• Fixed several stability issues

You can get the full binary download from Mozilla, users who already have Firefox should get an automatic notice, or can trigger it through the about screen.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with copying a good idea and executing it correctly. Follow Chrome's separate development channels, Mozilla has released the first channel, Aurora. The idea behind this all is a much more accelerated release, where Firefox 4 took too long before being released.

Besides the cutting edge nightlies, which are released, well nightly, there is now an Aurora channel, which contains slightly less unstable builds. The advantage of this channel is that it's more stable than the nightlies, but still contains an early preview of things to come in the next Firefox release.

After Aurora comes the beta channel, which is not yet ready, and of course the final end product. The idea is that trunk is the main Mozilla central channel is never blocked from new features, while Aurora and Beta channel allow for stabilization of the eventual end user release.

For now Firefox 5 has made it onto Aurora. Being more raw than other releases, this build caries the Aurora name, while official Firefox branding starts in the beta channel. Currently this release looks a lot like Firefox 4, but contains a lot of fixes that just didn't make it.

Let hope we'll see awesome new stuff in the coming weeks! You can try the Aurora channel on your own risk =)

Finally all the long and hard work on the fourth and biggest release yet has payed off! Mozilla has released Firefox 4, a new contender in the war with Internet Explorer and Chrome.

Feeling like hearing that Duke Nukem Forever finally gets released this year, Firefox 4.0 offers a very big leap in progress over the Firefox 3.x series. But the competition hasn't waited for Mozilla to catch up, the current browser war will be a hard one, and it will be interesting to see if Firefox 4.0 is enough to remain strong.

The first thing you'll be greeted with is the new look. Firefox 4 has a much different and better look that its predecessor, fitting nicely with the glass theme in Windows Vista and 7, while polishing it to look good on Mac too. Tabs have moved to the tab (you can still disable this feature), following the idea what Chrome and Opera have started. The menu bar is gone (with an option to re-enable it), instead giving a two tear menu in the top left under the orange Firefox button. Yeah it looks a lot like Opera's. Another bar missing in action is the status bar, which now, similar to Chrome, pop-ups in the bottom if necessary.

But of course there is more. The rendering engine has received much love from the Mozilla developers, bringing it to the present future with more standards support. The JavaScript engine has also been greatly optimized to be fast and ready to compare with the likes of V8. New is also hardware acceleration, which per platform improves rendering of web sites as well as elements like video and canvas. WebGL support, which is a JavaScript wrapper around OpenGL ES, may have a future a new way of using accelerated 3D graphics in your web browser.

When these superficial and internal changes aren't enough there are new features present as well, like Firefox sync, which can synchronize bookmarks, but also preferences and passwords in the cloud with a secure connection. A new way of handling tabs has also been added, you can now for groups of tabs that stick together. And of course you can now also pin tabs as web apps in your browser, which secures them from being closed accidentally and stick nicely on the left side.

There's a whole lot more in this release and Firefox 4 certainly is a good web browser. It can't but be noticed that the release is inspired mainly by Chrome, but what the heck, it's a war out there and it's never a bad thing to copy great ideas. All Firefox users should install this release, and of course persuade some extension developers to release their add-ons. Let's enjoy this great release!

It's weekend, but Mozilla still released a second release candidate of their upcoming Firefox 4 web browser.

• Blacklisted a few invalid HTTPS certificates
• Updated localizations for 29 locales
• Added Vietnamese localization, bringing the total languages available in Firefox 4 to 83

With Microsoft releasing their Internet Explorer 9 only days ago, it's nice to see the second most popular web browser to do the same, so you can stack them up nicely against each other.

You can download and test drive this almost golden release from the Mozilla web site. Firefox 4 final is expected to arrive on March 22.

We're almost there! The first release candidate of the eagerly anticipated Firefox 4 has arrived. As release candidates signal the end of the beta area and a near gold release you should not be too afraid to try this release and show it to others.

• General stability, performance, and compatibility improvements
• See the complete changelist from the previous beta

You can download this release from Mozilla's web site, or update your already installed Firefox 4 beta through the Help menu. Enjoy, but be sure to report serious blockers in this release.

While Firefox 3.6.14 only arrived a few days ago, Mozilla already released the next version, both being recommended updates.

• Fixed an issue where some Java applets would fail to load in Firefox 3.6.14
• Fixed several security issues
• Fixed several stability issues

You can download the full binary download from Mozilla's site, or trigger the auto-update system from the help menu.

Mozilla has released the last beta of the long awaited Firefox 4 and hopes to get a release candidate out soon, to reach a golden release later next month.

• Increased performance while viewing Flash content
• Improved plugin compatibility with hardware acceleration enabled
• Hovering over links now displays the URL at the bottom of the window rather than in the location bar
• General stability, performance, and compatibility improvements
• See the complete changelist from the previous beta

The full binary can be downloaded from Mozilla's site. Those who are already using the previous betas can update automatically using Firefox build-in system.

The release candidate is close, so here another beta that contains some new features before everything gets frozen.

• Support for the proposed Do Not Track ("DNT") header
• Connection status messages are now shown in a small overlay
• WebGL has been re-enabled on Linux
• The default homepage design has been refreshed
• Firefox no longer switches into offline mode automatically
• See the complete changelist from the previous beta

You can download the fully binary from Mozilla's site, enjoy!

With a final release planned for the end of February the pace is increasing to get a solid golden release out, thus we can welcome the tenth beta, before the release candidates begin.

• Compatibilty and stability improvements when using Adobe Flash on Mac OS X
• Improvements in memory usage
• Support for a graphics driver blacklist to improve stability
• See the complete changelist from the previous beta

You can download this release from Mozilla's web site, be sure to give feedback by using the button in the top right corner.