Mozilla said in its latest notes Firefox 4 beta 4 will release this coming Monday, August 23. The release will be the first to have built-in graphics acceleration for the regular web and, in Windows, will invoke Direct2D to use the video chipset to speed up rendering web code. The feature isn’t enabled by default .
Linux and Mac users don’t yet have a promise of using OpenGL for a similar speed increase. Acceleration is already present in Safari 5 and will come to Internet Explorer 9 when it’s available in a public beat on September 15.
All users should get tab sets, the tab management feature previously known as App Candy. The feature borrows the concept of a virtual desktop to create groups of tabs for certain tasks. It likewise takes a cue from Apple by using an Expose-style page to view and manage sets.
Beta 5 will be the last release with new features added before Mozilla freezes code and eventually moves to the release candidate stage. It’s not certain when a final build of Firefox 4 will be available, but one should be ready before the end of the year
