Mozilla releases Firefox 4 today

Mozilla releases version 4.0 of its popular open source web browser Firefox today.

However, Mozilla also had to release an update at the weekend to patch two issues, which Mozilla director Mike Beltzner said "have caused us to take two very small, very isolated fixes in order to better protect Firefox 4 users."

The launch comes a week after arch-rival Microsoft unveiled Internet Explorer 9.0, and two weeks after Google released version 10 of its Chrome browser.

Firefox 4.0 supports Linux distributions, Windows (including XP Professional, which Internet Explorer 9 does not support) and Mac OS X.

It has graphics hardware acceleration, better JavaScript performance through a new engine called JägerMonkey, WebGL-based 3D graphics, and better web standards compliance.

Our early performance tests show better web standards compliance, up to 97 per cent from 95 per cent on the Web Standards Project Acid3 benchmark, and better JavaScript performance, up 31 per cent on FutureMark's Peacekeeper JavaScript browser benchmark, from the last version, 3.6.15.

Mozilla Firefox 4's Peacekeeper benchmark is still 57 per cent slower than Google Chrome 10's Peacekeeper result though.

The latest statistics from browser NetMarketShare shows a decline in market share for Firefox of about one per cent over the January to February period, from 22.7 per cent to 21.7 per cent, which Mozilla will be hoping to reverse with Firefox 4.