Hands On with FireFox 4 Beta 1

12 July, 2010 - 07:00 AM - 9 Comments

FireFox 4 Beta 1 has is publicly released and I decided to take the new version of Firefox for a spin and see how it fares against a variety of websites based on HTML 5, Flash and WordPress. Unfortunately the Beta Version of FireFox 4 is so unstable that my tests ended just a few minutes after they began.

The first two websites I decided to try either didn’t properly display on FireFox 4 Beta 1 or crashed the browser entirely 100% of the time in more than a few scenario’s. I am not actually sure how PCMag and other websites were able to do a thorough review of FireFox 4 Beta 1 when I found it so unstable just from the few sites I tested.

Hootsuite and FireFox 4 Beta 1

Don’t even think about it, just trying to load the Hootsuite Twitter Client interface will show you a blank screen where none of the streams will be able to load while using FireFox 4 Beta 1. I reported the bug to Mozilla after finding it.

Twitter Oath Applications and FireFox 4 Beta 1

Refollow.com or any other website I tried which has to do an OATH authentication to Twitter caused an immediate FireFox 4 crash which promptly brought up the crash reporter:

Closing out the browser and testing several times always produced the same results. I closed the browser, opened Firefox 3.6 and all the websites worked perfectly fine.

Summary

Firefox 4 promises faster web browsing and increased performance but the initial Beta 1 release I found to be so unstable I couldn’t even use it very long for testing purposes. I will re-review Firefox 4 when a later Beta is released or when RC1 is ready and available to the general public.

-Dragon Blogger

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Written by Justin Germino (1518 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger

Paul@Michigan Accident Attorney

I've always enjoyed using firefox. I started using it once if first came out and still use it now. Hopefully they fix the bugs you mentioned so they can take over chrome.

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Bob@36 bar stools

Yeah, it really looks like they are incorporating some of the look of Chrome and Opera. A lot of features, such as tabs, started off in Opera and then were adapted by other browsers.

I think I will wait until Firefox 4 goes out of beta, as I've heard some other people have also had crashes.

Service Desk

I hope they fix the bugs here, I like using Chrome and firefox but there are times when they crash so I prefer using both browsers.

Nasif

I downloaded and installed it. It looks like an exact replica of OPERA ! I think some developers of OPERA moved to firefox !

dragonblogger

Yep, it does but it doesn't perform as well.

Looks like they are trying to make it simple like google chrome. Lemme download and see how they are trying to be like chrome !

Whiztechy

Nice read.I too found few bugs while testing Firefox 4(beta). Waiting for new version, hope that atleast new version meet the expectations.

Yeah, lets see how RC1 shakes out.

Sourav @ Tech N Blogging

I didn't check the sites that you have mentioned here, before. But after reading this, I went to check it. Not only all these problems occurred, but also it was way too slow than Chrome (well, speed has never been the plus point of FF).