Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 Evolution Tab Sets Preview

Mozilla is currently hard at work building the next Beta development milestone for Firefox 4.0, and as early adopters already testing the previous Beta 3 releases know, changes are bound to be unveiled.

Case in point: Tab Sets. Fact is that testers that already gave pre-release versions of Firefox 4.0 a try are undoubtedly familiar with Tab Candy.

Tab Candy is a new feature planned for Firefox 4.0 in line with the evolution of the open source browser’s tabbed browsing functionality. 

Tab Candy was introduced by Aza Raskin, Head of UX, Mozilla Labs, in the second half of June 2010, and made it into Firefox 4.0 Beta 3.

Now this feature moved forward, and one change that testers will notice immediately is related to the official label.

Tab Candy is now referred to as Tab Sets. In all fairness, Tab Sets is a more descriptive label, and better as allowing users to infer what the feature is all about, namely grouping tabs into collection, and streamlining navigation.

Mozilla is currently offering a pre-Beta 4 nightly build of Firefox 4.0, and the release comes with Tab Sets, which was formerly Tab Candy.

Available for download from Mozilla’s FTP servers, Firefox 4.0 pre-Beta 4 comes complete with an instructional video on what Tabs Sets is all about, and just how it can be used.

The video is much simpler than Raskin’s original content on Tab Candy, but at the same time, it’s only designed to get early adopters familiar with the new feature.

But don’t think for a second that Mozilla is done with Tab Sets, because this is simply not the case. In this regard, Raskin’s introductory video for Tab Candy is a great resource to see not only what the feature brings to the table, but also what’s in store for the future.

Firefox 4.0 Beta 3 for Windows is available for download here.

Firefox 4.0 Beta 3 for Mac OS X is available for download here.

An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.