Mozilla talks up latest Firefox 4 beta

Securing the web

Privacy is an ongoing concern for web users, particularly as targetted advertising has become the defining model when it comes to making money from websites. Meanwhile, other users are concerend about the potential for identity theft or worry about their significant other seeing something incriminating in their browser history. An easy-to-activate private browsing mode deals with the latter. Other security measures include defenses against cross-site scripting attacks and HTTP Strict Transport Security, which automatically loads the secure version of a web site where available.

Mozilla has also premiered a “Do Not Track” opt-out system for sites that use cookies to track your online activity and advertise to you accordingly. It’s a rather unusual concept, as Firefox itself doesn’t actually do anything except inform the sites you visit that you don’t want to be tracked. Instead, it relies on websites to have the good grace to sign up to the scheme and honour your expressed wishes. It’s rather like the Telephone Preference Service telemarketing opt-out, except for websites and tracker cookies. Unfortunately, it’s based on the hope that website proprietors will be kind enough to abide by it, rather than being legally enforced like TPS.

Future fox?

Firefox 4 beta 12 looks and feels a lot more complete than the earlier betas we’ve tried. The browser is fast, smooth and bang up to date, although support from third-party extensions is still limited. The beta already very usable and we’re looking forward to the final release version. It’s certainly taken long enough. In future, Mozilla plans to roll out new features as they’re developed. Jay Sullivan told us that “Firefox 4 will be the last big release” and that the future is in smaller releases and faster development. That alone might be enough to keep Firefox abreast of the competition. Whether it’s enough to bring us back from Chrome remains to be seen.