Mar 22, 2011 19:21 GMT  ·  By

A new version of the already popular Firefox mobile browser is now available for download for users of devices based on Google's Android operating system, or on handsets powered by Maemo, namely Firefox 4 (RC).

The new release follows a long series of beta versions made available for users of the said OSes, and comes with a wide range of performance enhancements, as well as bug fixes, and new features.

According to Mozilla, the new release was meant to add more speed to the application as well as stability and increased usability.

At the same time, the company notes that the number of add-ons that are available for the users of the mobile version of the browser has increased even more, now reaching 150, and that more of them should arrive soon.

Some of the main improvements that the company brought to the new version of the browser would include:

- We improved startup speed even more (compared to previous Beta versions). This was a top user request. - Improved page load speed - Scrolling and page rendering are significantly faster and much smoother, showing far less checker boarding. Smarter page rendering and page loading algorithms led to this very visible improvement. - JavaScript is faster - our benchmarks show additional performance improvement compared to previous Beta releases. - It is now easier to close the sidebars without accidentally reopening them. - We now support copy and paste for all form fields on web pages. - We fixed miscellaneous bugs, introduced usability improvements, and optimized the user experience with this release. Firefox 4 for mobile Release Candidate is also more stable than previous versions. See "Known Issues" below for details on fixed bugs - Japanese is now included in the default set of languages for the Firefox user interface.

At the same time, the development team behind the browser notes that they are continuously focused on reducing memory and optimizing CPU usage. The overall responsiveness of the application has been improved considerably, and even more enhancements should come to it soon.

The new release comes with a series of optimizations meant to increase the browser's speed and to make it even more responsive than it was before, especially when using Firefox Sync.

Moreover, the app comes with an improved Form Assistant, which was meant to make filling out forms even easier with the new release.

According to Mozilla, “tapping into form fields zooms you in swiftly and shows a list of suggested values to make navigation easy and to minimize typing. […] The new controls make it very easy to fill in forms in web pages.”

The company also included a series of enhancements aimed at app developers, who can come up with even greater add-ons now. Firefox 4 (RC) comes with support for IPv6 on Android, and for "overflow: scroll" and "overflow: auto" CSS properties.

Download Firefox 4.0 RC for Android and Maemo