Mozilla slings out 9th beta for Firefox 4

Mozilla has squirted out the ninth test build of the next iteration of its upcoming open-source browser.

Firefox 4 beta 9 was pushed out on Friday, ahead of a planned Release Candidate build that is expected to be followed by the final code hitting the interwebs next month.

Given that the test build is so close to being finalised, Mozilla squeezed very few new features into the ninth beta of Firefox 4.

It said it has tweaked bookmarks and history code to improve speed and performance.

Additionally, the outfit has enabled "per-compartment garbage collection", which it said would reduce the work done during complex animations.

Besides from that, Mozilla said some bugs remained. Principally, its tab-sorting interface (dubbed Panorama) feature still has some glitches that need to be ironed out.

Currently, the beta is blocking out users of US video website Hulu.com, while some testers have noticed Twitter being slower than usual when entering text on the micro-blogging site.

Scrolling in Google's Gmail window also appears sluggish for some web surfers, noted Mozilla.

Firefox 4, once completed, will come loaded with Mozilla's JaegerMonkey Javascript engine extension, additional hardware acceleration, and will allow coders to build plug-in-free 3D graphics via WebGL.

As we noted last week, Mozilla wants to get bug counts down to zero prior to shipping the RC version of Firefox 4, which is expected to arrive early next month. ®