Firefox 4 Beta 1 Released

It’s finally here: Mozilla has released the first beta for Firefox 4.

The new iteration of the world’s second most popular web browser, which can be downloaded here, has been hotly anticipated for almost a year. Today however, it transitions from concept to reality, with many more betas to come until its official release at the end of the year.

As we have reported in the past, Firefox 4 is a major upgrade from its predecessors. It not only includes a redesign of the user interface (tabs are now on top except for the Mac version), but a wave of additional features, including enhanced HTML5 support, hardware-accelerated HD video, WebSockets and enhanced add-on support via Jetpack.

There’s a lot more to FirefoxFirefox 4, most of which you can see in this feature spotlight the Mozilla team put together to highlight the many upgrades the new browser contains. However, we want to stress that this is an early beta of the browser — it will crash and frustrate you, which is exactly what Mozilla is hoping to catch now before its final release.

Mozilla needs Firefox 4 to be a winner; in recent months, Google Chrome has been stealing browser marketshare at Firefox’s expense. The new version could either reverse the downtrend or accelerate its fall.

Are you going to download the new Firefox 4 beta? What do you think of the new features? Let us know in the comments.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 Released