Mozilla unleashes Firefox 3 Beta 4
Mozilla accelerated toward the final of Firefox 3 Monday by posting the fourth beta for download and immediately confirming that it would give developers just a week before it froze the code on the next.
Reducing Firefox’s memory consumption has become one of the hallmarks of Version 3’s development. The browser, which has been blasted for tying up increasing amounts of memory the longer it’s open, now uses an automated cycle collector to free any unused memory and a new allocator to reduce memory fragmentation. Mozilla has estimated that it’s plugged “hundreds” of leaks so far. Updated release notes also published Monday boasted that Beta 4 contains more than 900 enhancements since the mid-February Beta 3, including very visible changes to the browser’s look and feel. It is now more in line with the appearance of native applications on the various operating systems on which it runs, said Mozilla.
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