Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta Arrives with Sync, App Tabs and More

Mozilla has released a new beta version of Firefox 4, the company’s next iteration of the popular Firefox browser. The latest beta version of Firefox 4 includes improvements to startup speed, bookmarking and animation smoothing as well as delivering many new features that you won’t find in the existing Firefox 3 versions.

In the Firefox 4 beta the tabs have a new location, shifted above the search bar like we see in Chrome and in addition tot he movement, you can also switch to an open tab when you search for something in the search bar. For example, if you have a Wikipedia tab open and begin to type in Wikipedia you have the option of switching to your open tab instead of cluttering your tabs bar.

Also cleaning up the user experience is the introduction of App Tabs. App Tabs allow you to keep frequently used programs always open and somewhat minimized so that you don’t accidentally close them and so they don’t take up a bunch of room on your tab bar.

Another new feature in the Firefox 4 Beta is syncing which allows you to keep your tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords in sync across computers and other mobile devices with Firefox. Here’s a video of how to set up Firefox Sync.

The latest version of Firefox is still in beta which means it is for testing and shouldn’t be used in critical situations involving your day-to-day work. While the word “beta” has lost it’s edge and many times the “beta” versions are safe to use as your primary tool we recommend installing the Firefox 4 beta alongside your existing browser.

If you want to install Firefox 4 alongside your existing Firefox 3 installation simply choose custom install and pick a new location for your Firefox 4 beta installation.