Firefox 4 B4 Now Online, Brings Tab 'Panorama'

News
By Marcus Yam
published

Tab Candy becomes Firefox Panorama.

It was supposed to be out a little earlier, but the fourth beta of Firefox 4.0 is now out and it brings with it a couple new features that Mozilla hopes to set it apart from the other browsers on the market right now.

One feature already discussed before is Tab Candy, which is now renamed Firefox Panorama. For those of us with more tabs open at a time than can fit on the width of our browser windows (I currently have over 150 tabs open, though it's due time to clean up), a zoomed-out 'panoramic' view of all tabs can be far easier to manage and group than just the regular line up of tabs.

Check out the video below for more:

Another feature weaved into the new Firefox 4 beta is Sync, which is very handy for accessing bookmarks, history, Awesome Bar, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs accessible across multiple computers and mobile devices.

Ready to give the beta a spin? Click here.

If you're running Windows, be sure to check out how to enable hardware acceleration.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
47 Comments Comment from the forums
  • soo-nah-mee
    Looks like Firefox might be getting 2nd chance from me. I'm loving Chrome (although I see many others are not), but there are things I miss about Firefox. And...... download.
    Reply
  • TunaSoda
    Yawn
    Reply
  • 150 tabs is a bit ridiculous...that can't be productive.
    Reply
  • saran008
    Thunbs Up Firefox :)
    Reply
  • mitch074
    I've never left Firefox (if only because Chrome on my OS has been made available only a short while ago), however I must say I'm pleasantly surprised by the performances Firefox 4 beta 4 for Linux 64-bit (the Mozilla build) brought over my distro's default 3.6.8 build.

    The interesting thing though, is that on Linux, the 3.6.8 "software rendering" goes as fast as 4.0's hardware-accelerated rendering on many IE9 demoes (psychedelic browsing, for example, goes well above 1000 rotations on Firefox 3.6.8 for Linux - but it actually depends on hardware drivers, on Intel crap I get more than 1000 on a 600x600 window, if I go over 700 it falls under 1).

    Panorama is mightily interesting, but I'm not so sure about Sync - although if it really is secure, I'll probably use it heavily: between work, home, netbook and various VMs, it sure would be useful.
    Reply
  • bunz_of_steel
    FF Rulez! pawn IE > noobs
    Reply
  • Bolbi
    Re:mitch074
    I don't think Firefox 4 is hardware-accelerated on Linux (yet). It's only on Windows that it can use Direct2D, the standard they're using for acceleration. On Win7, hardware acceleration works great!
    Reply
  • Parrdacc
    Nice. Well Firefox has done very well for me and 4.0 looks like it will do even more, but I will wait till it's final release.
    Reply
  • enrico84
    omg. all u guys talk about firefox and chrome. Why don't to try Opera? is not cool?? It's amazing! Actually I use Opera 70% of the time, 25% chrome and 5% IE (just when i'don't want to have "compatibility problems)..
    Try it and enjoy the speed (and the future like Opera unite that allow u to share everything u got on ur HD!
    Reply
  • warezme
    150 tabs and excited about a browser update......., get out much???
    Reply