Mozilla has been busy – a week after it released Firefox 4 (see our Firefox 4 review), and less than a week after the release candidate, it has released the general availability version of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo.
A much improved version, Mozilla claims the new Firefox 4 for Mobile is built on the same platform as the desktop version, and is three times faster than the stock Android browser, with a brand new JaegerMonkey JavaScript engine. Apart from improved page load speed, the browser’s startup speed has also been enhanced. It is also built with complete support for the future of the web – HTML5, and IPv6 (only on Android). The new browser can be personalized easily as well, with Personas and custom start pages.
Major new features include Firefox Sync, tabbed browsing (which can now also be opened as thumbnails), one-touch bookmarking, and a new minimalist UI for maximum webpage display area. Mozilla also announced that there are over 150 add-ons for Firefox mobile. Developers were also encouraged by Mozilla to build mobile add-ons, with new tools at the Developer Hub. Restartless add-ons were introduced in Beta 4 of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo, and they are finally here now. Offline browsing is also supported.
[RELATED_ARTICLE]The new UI features include an improved Form Assistant, with such features as suggested values to save typing and zooming, and copy paste for all forms. Context and site menus have also been improved, with such additions as Save as PDF, Share Page, and Forget Password. Overall video and audio performance has also been improved. Touch/gesture inputs and scrolling have also been optimized with a new layer based interface.
Download it for Android and Maemo from here. For more details on changes, check out the release notes, and, a short video introducing the release below: