With WebM support UI enhancements

Jun 14, 2010 14:36 GMT  ·  By

The latest development milestone of the next generation of Mozilla’s open source browser made available for download today, June 14th, 2010, is also the first fully fledged taste of Firefox 3.6’s successor. Mozilla has just released Firefox 3.7 Alpha 5, and Softpedia readers have received a heads-up in this regard for quite some time now, so you should have your testing machines fired up. The Mozilla Developer Preview 1.9.3 Alpha, also labeled Firefox 3.7 Alpha 5, is in fact the first Alpha release of Firefox 4.0.

At the end of the past week, testers got the chance to download and try out a candidate of Firefox 4.0 Alpha. The nightly Build is now followed by the fully fledged Alpha development milestone. Designed for deployment in testing environments only, Firefox 4.0 Alpha will install fine alongside older releases of Firefox, allowing users to get a feel of what’s coming in the next major iteration of Firefox.

The first thing that customers will notice is the overhauled graphical user interface sported by Firefox 4.0 Alpha. The revamped UI is tailored to Windows 7’s Aero GUI, with a full transparency effect, similar to that of Internet Explorer 8 running on top of the latest version of the Windows client. At the same time, the redesign now allows users to place the Tabs on top of the Address Bar, and switch off the Menu, to achieve a Ribbon/Fluent-like look and feel. The evolution of Firefox 4.0’s UI is not yet done, but, when it will be completed, the browser will share style elements with Office 2010 and Office 2007.

Another notable feature, but this time around for developers, is support for WebM. Mozilla revealed since day 1 of the WebM project that it was backing the initiative, and, by the looks of it, the company is going to provide native support for WebM, with the focus on VP8. In this regard, VP8 will be the second HTML 5 codec Firefox will play nice with, in addition to Ogg Theora. Both Mozilla and Opera have so far ignored H.264.

Mozilla is currently working its way to the first Beta of Firefox 4.0. Provided that all goes well, the browser vendor will have the Beta development milestone ready for early adopters by the end of this month. And the fact of the matter is that there’s not much time left, just half a month. Of course, Mozilla could also diverge from its initial plan, as nothing is really set in stone, and provide the Beta Build of Firefox 4.0 a tad later. This could jeopardize, however, the company’s overall plan to offer the final version of Firefox 4.0 to the public by the end of 2010.

Firefox 4.0 Alpha 1 (Mozilla Developer Preview 3.7 Alpha 5) is available for download here.

Opera 10.60 Beta with HTML5 WebM VP8 video support is available for download here.

Google Chrome 6.0.427.0 WebM/VP8 Dev is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 2 Build 1.9.7766.6000 is available for download here.

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