Back in May of 2010, Mozilla developers first publicly detailed their plans for Firefox 4. Those plans have now come to fruition with the release of Firefox 4 today.
Firefox 4 introduces a new user interface to the open source browser. Tabs are now on top and buttons have been re-arranged. Tabs can now also be grouped to help organization and they can be pinned as App Tabs.
Performance get a big boost in the new browser with an improved JavaScript engine. Startup times have also been improved, to help users get up and running with Firefox faster than before.
Another key aspect of Firefox 4 are the new security features. The browser includes a Do Not Track implementation, to help protect user privacy. There is also the new HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) to ensure SSL connections are used when available.
Content Security Policy (CSP) is a new feature designed to help reduce the risk of Cross Site Scripting (XSS). CSP extends beyond the browser user to websites with a reporting mechanism that could help to reduce XSS risks for the Internet as a whole.
“The reporting aspect means that every Firefox 4 users makes the web safer,” Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox at Mozilla told InternetNews.com. “If a Firefox 4 user is the first one to see an un-authorized script, we’ll send back the ping and the site can see that and they can fix the bug.”