Download Firefox 4.0 Alpha Developer Preview with WebM/VP8 Support

Mozilla is making headway with the development process of the next major iteration of its open source browser. Early adopters can now download an early Build of an upcoming Developer Preview milestone for Firefox 4.0, a release designed to pave the way toward the first official Beta of Firefox 3.6’s successor. Mozilla Developer Preview 3.7 Alpha 5 went live on the company’s FTP servers and is currently available for download. This is, of course, nothing more than a nightly Build designed for early adopters and developers, and not for deployment into production environments.

“You are running the Mozilla Developer Preview, an alpha release for early testing of future Firefox features. Mozilla needs your help to test new features and find problems with our products. Helping out won't take much of your time, doesn't require special skills, and will help make the next version of Firefox even better,” a message from Mozilla Developer Preview (1.9.3 alpha)’s FirstRun page reads.

So far, Mozilla has produced a few nightly Builds of Firefox 4.0 pre-Alpha with support for WebM. The first dates back to May 2010 and was released in conjunction with the WebM project. The latest WebM-ready Firefox Build, also a v4.0 pre-Alpha, was offered to testers earlier this week. The fact that Mozilla has now integrated support for WebM and especially for the VP8 HTML5 codec in Mozilla Developer Preview 3.7 Alpha 5 is a clear indication that the first Beta of Firefox 4.0 will bring to the table WebM support as well.

Firefox 4.0 Beta is planned for availability later this month. When it introduced the timeline for the next major version of its open source browser, Mozilla did emphasize that the details were by no means final. In this sense, Firefox 4.0 Beta could be released at a later date, although work is being done to ensure that testers get downloads by the end of June 2010. If all goes well, Firefox 4.0 will be released to the public by the end of 2010.

The Mozilla Developer Preview 3.7 Alpha 5 (nightly) is available for download here.

Google Chrome 6.0.422.0 Dev WebM VP8 is available for download here.
Opera 10.54 Beta with HTML5 WebM VP8 video support is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 2 Build 1.9.7766.6000 is available for download here.