New Tab Candy with Firefox 4 Alpha build on Ubuntu

I stumbled across this new feature build of Firefox 4 in my daily Google alerts, and I'm really glad that I did.

This new build of Firefox 4 offers a very new feature for tab management , that to be honest is quite frankly very impressive.

It allows you to drag and drop tabs into little organised groups, but you can happily move tabs between these groups if you like.

The best way to have a look at how this works is to view this video by the developers.

Tab Candy Video

I have been using it since I found it, and it really does make your browsing experience so much better, to the point I have started using Firefox a little more often again.

One thing to watch out for though, is don't let this alpha auto-update, as it pulls in the latest FF 4 beta main trunk code, which doesn't have this feature turned on yet. So turn off auto update, and just manually grab the latest builds from the site below.

I would recommend downloading and having a play , and see what you think.

Tab Candy web page and download

Firefox Beta 1 release candidate out in the wild

There have been quite a few changes between 3.7 alpha and the 4.0 beta 1 release. There is a definite change in performance again, which is always good to see. They have added a new bookmark icon on the top Chrome area which works well, and along side that is added a Feedback button to help you get more involved in the beta testing process. Whether that will continue into the final release is not clear at this stage.

They are going to change the arrangement of the tabs at the top of the window, but this has not been implemented on the Linux or Mac versions yet, but we are told it's coming shortly. Update with the release of the beta this morning , having the tabs on top is now working on Linux.

The add-ons menu has been changed and makes it very easy to navigate all your plugins, themes and extensions. See the picture below.



The Mozilla sync - which was weave - is now fully integrate and works seamlessly with the new browser.

There are also many under the hood changes which I feel will make a lot of difference to the developer community and offer extra facilities for the end user like HTML5 video codec support using WebM

See here

Get it here

July is the month for new Browsers for Linux

I have been using all the latest browsers from the main standards compliant camp lately, as the heat is turned up with performance and functionality.

Well July 2010 is a real watershed in the available browsers for Linux with the arrival of the long awaited Opera 10.60 - which is a very polished, fast and extremely enjoyable browser to use. It has delivered on the long awaited promises that it has alluded to over the years. Google Chromium now has another real competitor on their hands, no doubt about that.



Also , while checking the Mozilla Firefox nightlies this morning - an oxymoron ;-) - I found that the availability of the next major release is getting prepared for it's beta testing phase on or around the 5th July. I have been using the 3.7Alpha5 for most of June, and this is what I believe will become the version 4.0 beta1, and it is a lot faster on Ubuntu 10.04 than 3.6 is, and it is now as close to Chromium and Opera as to not really be a deciding factor.

There is no doubt that Chromium stirred things up for ever when they appeared for good. We are now reaping the rewards of that entry into the browser arena, and as consumers of browsers we should all be grateful for that.

It does however now present the average Linux user with a fantastic dilemma, which browser should I use today? There is not an easy answer for that I have to admit.

I use Google Chromium now on a daily basis, as I like it's speed, auto-sync and extensions, but there are still a few rough edges , which occasionally mean I have to switch back to using Firefox to get work done. I'm working with the developers to make this situation better by reporting bugs as I find them, but it's not always easy, when you just want to get things done.

I also now have another contender in the form of Opera to switch to , as it also has far less problems with IE specific web sites, and now offers so much it really can't be ignored.