You are viewing information archived from Mozilla.org on 2014-02-12.

Mozilla Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo - Release Notes

Take your Firefox anywhere. Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo is built on the same technology platform as Firefox 4 for desktop computers, just optimized for browsing on a mobile device. Check out the new and improved features, known issues, and frequently-asked questions. As always, you’re encouraged to provide suggestions to improve Firefox for mobile or file a bug in Bugzilla. If you need help, visit the Firefox Mobile Support Forum.

What's New in Firefox 4

    Our Release Candidate is a very important step towards our final release. Since the previous (Beta 5) version, we improved performance even more, and we fixed numerous bugs and added some important features. Based on all the great user feedback we have received, we have continued to focus on making the browser faster, more stable, and more usable with this version:
  • Add-ons
    • There are now over 150 add-ons for Firefox for mobile, and counting. Dozens of add-ons are already compatible with our latest browser version. Thanks to our awesome community, the number of exciting compatible add-ons increase constantly. Check out the winners of our Mobile Add-on Cup and many other amazing extensions for your mobile browser.
  • Performance and Memory Usage
    • We improved startup speed even more (compared to previous Beta versions). This was a top user request.
    • Improved page load speed
    • In Beta 5 we introduce the feature to move Firefox to the SD card along with all its profile data (requires Android 2.2 or higher). This reduces memory usage on your mobile device to a minimum and leaves more space for other apps.
    • Scrolling and page rendering are significantly faster and much smoother, showing far less checkerboarding. Smarter page rendering and page loading algorithms led to this very visible improvement.
    • JavaScript is faster - our benchmarks show additional performance improvement compared to previous Beta releases.
    • Reducing memory and optimizing CPU usage are ongoing themes. We have been working on improvements in this area to make the browser more responsive and stable. Overall responsiveness has improved. With this version, we have implemented additional optimizations that speed up the browser and make it much more responsive, especially when using Firefox Sync. You will see continuous improvement in our future releases
  • User Interface
    • Filling out forms is now easier than ever with our improved Form Assistant: tapping into form fields zooms you in swiftly and shows a list of suggested values to make navigation easy and to minimize typing. This is particularly useful when using Firefox Sync, which helps synchronize form data like user names and passwords (and also bookmarks, browsing history) across your connected devices, so you never have to type a user / password or other form fill data twice. The new controls make it very easy to fill in forms in web pages.
    • It is now easier to close the sidebars without accidentally reopening them.
    • We now support copy and paste for all form fields on web pages.
    • We fixed miscellaneous bugs, introduced usability improvements, and optimized the user experience with this release. Firefox 4 for mobile Release Candidate is also more stable than previous versions. See "Known Issues" below for details on fixed bugs
    • Japanese is now included in the default set of languages for the Firefox user interface.
  • For developers
    • NOW is the time to build new awesome add-on or to make all your mobile add-ons compatible with our Release Candidate. Our interfaces are all stable, we don't expect any changes for our final release that would impace add-ons. Go! Find all the tools and resources you need on our