Hottest development milestone of the next generation of Mozilla’s open source browser made available for download and also the first fully fledged taste of Firefox 3.6’s successor. The Mozilla Developer Preview 1.9.3 Alpha, also labelled Firefox 3.7 Alpha 5, is in fact the first Alpha release of Firefox 4.0.
First thing that customers will notice is the overhauled graphical user interface sported by Firefox 4.0 Alpha. The revamped UI is tailored to Windows 7’s Aero GUI, with a full transparency effect, similar to that of Internet Explorer 8 running on top of the latest version of the Windows client. At the same time, the redesign now allows users to place the Tabs on top of the Address Bar, and switch off the Menu, to achieve a Ribbon/Fluent-like look and feel. The evolution of Firefox 4.0’s UI is not yet done, but, when it will be completed, the browser will share style elements with Office 2010 and Office 2007.
Another notable feature, but this time around for developers, is support for WebM. Mozilla revealed since day 1 of the WebM project that it was backing the initiative, and, by the looks of it, the company is going to provide native support for WebM, with the focus on VP8. In this regard, VP8 will be the second HTML 5 codec Firefox will play nice with, in addition to Ogg Theora. Both Mozilla and Opera have so far ignored H.264. Anyway, you can download it here!
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