Firefox 4 beta 3 adds support for multitouch on Windows 7

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104

Firefox 4 is coming together steadily with another beta build now available. Mozilla pushed out Firefox 4 Beta 3 earlier today, which the organization has deemed stable and cleared for standard use. We would mostly agree with that, having used the first and second beta versions extensively. Personally, I've only experienced a handful of bugs which seem to be Flash-related, and they're uncommon anyhow.

Beta 3 doesn't bring a whole lot of exciting changes, but the biggest addition seems to be support for multitouch on Windows 7. That will probably be more appreciated when tablets flood the market, but as of now there aren't too many Windows users with touch displays -- at least not in the grand scheme of things. Mozilla has also tweaked the JavaScript engine and added support for 34 more languages.


Previous versions of the Firefox 4 beta should automatically update to beta 3, but you download a standalone installer here. At least two more betas are planned for the greatly overhauled browser, with the final build scheduled for November. Be sure to check out our compendium of Firefox 4 beta tweaks, and don't hesitate to share your own.

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I've been quite happy with these betas. However, I don't ever understand why people are so obsessed and such focus is put on "startup" performance. I run 5-7 extensions most of the time, so my startup time is a tad bit longer than normal--but I've never really cared. I care about the performance once it is running, which, even though it isn't as insanely fast as Chrome or Opera--I BARELY notice the difference. I also would never give up my AdBlock+, NoScript, and well-integrated LastPass extensions. I've tried, but nothing can beat them.
 
having 8 tabs open up (tech spot being one of them) when I start the browser makes it very slow, especialy if I open as soon as I get Desktop from booting, I notice it opens in the beta alot quicker tho half my add ons don't work with it yet (add blocker plus randomly started working in the beta so I am :) )

Not had it crash yet, for a beta it seems very stable. Had no issues with any websites I use, can't wait for final release.
 
There's not much change you can notice, but this beta squashed 400+ bugs. It is pretty damn stable for a beta now. Mike Beltzner (Firefox's director) said beta 4 and 5 will be the ones with the most noticeable changes; with the fourth bringing some changes and improvements including the tabcandy feature, etc. and the 5th being the one showcasing what Firefox 4 will be really like, by using Mozilla 2.0 (Gecko 2.0), Jetpack, the new JS Engine JaegerMonkey, and electrolysis. After these betas, they will get into "feature freeze," and start polishing the whole browser for final release.
 
As exciting as this may be, it's time they let go of their x86 security blanket and made the move to developing a mainstream x64 browser.
 
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