Mozilla on Thursday released a Firefox 4 beta for Android and Maemo devices, a release that includes features like pinch-to-zoom, the Awesome Screen, and synching.Pinch-to-zoom is now supported on multi-touch devices, Mozilla said. The beta also add access to Firefox Sync and the Awesome Screen.
Sync provides seamless activity between the Web browsing and mobile experiences; make a change on the mobile Firefox and it will automatically appear on the desktop version as well. That applies to browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, form-fill data, and open tabs across devices. The Awesome Screen, meanwhile, gives instant access to recent history, bookmarks, and tabs by tapping the Awesome Bar.
Under the hood, Mozilla said it made two big architecture changes. The alpha release included Electrolysis, which allowed the browser to run in a separate process from the one that rendered Web content - thereby producing a more responsive browser. This beta release now adds something called Layers, which Mozilla said improves overall performance and graphics areas such as scrolling, zooming and animations.
"Firefox 4 Beta for mobile is significant step forward in sharing a personalized, seamless and encrypted Web experience across devices," Mozilla said in a blog post. "Developers have the power to use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to to build fast, powerful and beautiful mobile apps and add-ons that can reach millions of devices."
For more details, see Mozilla's release notes. Both versions are available for download now on Mozilla's Web site.
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