Firefox 4 Features Surface

Mountain View (CA) - Although Firefox 3 is still in research and development, Mozilla is already working on new features for the fourth version of its increasingly popular Web browser.

Webware spoke with Mozilla vice president Chris Beard, who mentioned two specific new concepts for Firefox 4 that will evolve the online experience and add greater integration with content stored on computer hard drives.

One of the new features is called "Prism," a next-gen software technology that would allow users to run Web-based content offline. For example, users would be able to visit websites and still access non-dynamic content even when they don't have an active Internet connection.

The other big feature already unveiled for Firefox 4 is called "Weave." This is an option that would basically create a set of online preferences and settings that is stored for each user instead of each computer.

In other words, users would be able to bring up their bookmarks, font settings and privacy preferences no matter which computer they use. This feature is set to be in its first stages in Firefox 3, but Firefox 4 will reportedly allow users to access these profiles on other browsers as well.

Beard told Webware that these are just a hint of some of the "crazy ideas" the development team is working on for the next-next-gen browser.