How good is Firefox 4

The newest version of the Mozilla web browser, Firefox 4, went through a long developing stage, the firs beta being available since January of last year. Meanwhile the expectations from the users of the old Firefox 3.6 grew higher and higher as specially because the other developers have been very productive and the alternatives are tempting.

Happily , the wait is over! Firefox 4 has lived up to all expectations. The Interface of the old Firefox 3 has been upgraded to a new and much more optimized one.  Behind the flashy interface, we have a completely new browser, the source code has been all but rewritten and it has many optimizations for speed and support for the newest technologies.

The tests show that the browser has a very high compatibility. The Acid 3 is one of the most powerful tools for evaluating the compatibility for web browsers. Firefox 4 does not disappoint , scoring a impressive 97/100 points and is rated higher than Internet Explorer 9 with 95/100 and is at a tie with the newest Opera 11.1, although it didn’t score as much as Google Chrome, who is the undisputed leader  with 100/100 points.

Speed

Using  SunspiderJavaScript Benchmark 0.9.1, who can test very precise the speed of a web-browser. During the tests, we opened more than one tab in every browser.

Sunspider JavaScript Benchmark 0.9.1

·         Internet Explorer 9…... 359.2ms +/- 2.3%

·         Opera 11.01…………...393.0ms +/- 0.3%

·         Firefox 4.0……......…...405.8ms +/- 0.7%

·         Chrome 10………..……424.0ms +/- 1.7%

 Peacekeeper Benchmark

·         Chrome 10…….….……6605

·         Opera 11.01……….…..5991

·         Internet Explorer 9.….. 3662

·         Firefox 4.0……….........2831

As you can see, the benchmarks  placed Firefox 4 almost at the bottom of the list. We can definitely say that Firefox 4 needs some optimizations  if they want to compete with the other web-browsers.

In tests, the speed of the browser is quite good and it behaved just as expected and we did not notice loss of speed when comparing with the other browsers. 

This being said, we can say that in normal user usage, you will not be able to notice any loss of speed.