If you’ve been riding along with Mozilla through Firefox 4′s Beta period on either Android or Maemo, it’s time for a refresh. Just a few minutes ago, the team pushed out a rather hefty upgrade.
Firefox 4 Beta 1 also claims to have enhanced responsiveness and performance. The alpha version had “Electrolysis, which allowed the browser interface to run in a separate process from the one rendering Web content, resulting in a much more responsive browser,” Mozilla wrote on its blog. Beta 1 also brings “Layers pieces which improve overall performance and in graphics areas such as scrolling, zooming and animations.”
The new goods:
* Localization: It’s now available in 10 different languages
* Page loads are 40% faster than in the last build, and the SunSpider Javascript benchmark is clocking this one in at 25% faster than Android’s stock browser
* Minor tweaks: Recently closed tabs can now be reopened, the memory usage requirements have been decreased, Geolocation support in Android, and “Improved Text Spacing”
* This build takes up about 60% less filespace, though you’ve have to do the uninstall/reinstall dance if you’re coming from an old build and want that space back.
* Multitouch zoom has been polished up for speed and accuracy
Ready to check it out? Here’s the download page.