What you need to know
- Mozilla just updated its GeckoView-based Firefox Preview to version 4.0.
- The new release brings with it features like a password manager, in-app language changing, and a 'Top Sites' section.
- Extension support is, sadly, still restricted to just uBlock Origin at the moment.
Mozilla has been working on a revamped version of its Android browser for nearly a year now. Firefox Preview's biggest claim to fame is that it eschews the default WebView API used by most Android browsers for Mozilla's own GeckoView, which the company claims is "designed to expose the entire power of the Web."
The latest release for the Preview browser brings the build number to 4.0 (via Techdows). Alongside that bump in versions, users also get a slate of new features. The full changelog is shown below:
- Login management
- In-App Language Chooser (Nightly-only)
- Top Sites
- Bypassing Certificate errors
- Fix persistent undo notification
- Initial extension support featuring uBlock Origin
- And other bugfixes and improvements.
The most notable of these changes is the new password manager, which also syncs with your Firefox account to let you automatically fill in login information on different devices, including the desktop app. 'Top Sites' is a showcase of your favorite sites on the new tab page. That's one less click for tuning into Reddit, I suppose.
The in-app language changer is restricted to only the Nightly builds of Firefox Preview, unfortunately. And, as usual, you get an assortment of bug fixes and performance tweaks as Mozilla gears up for a stable release soon.
On the extensions front, not much progress has been made, unfortunately. While the changelog mentions extension support, this feature has actually been working for a while now and is not new to this build. Moreover, as before, only one extension is currently supported for Firefox Preview: uBlock Origin. Mozilla has promised to officially support up to 100 different extensions from its recommended extensions program in due time, but when that will be, exactly, is anyone's guess.
You can download Firefox Preview here and Firefox Preview Nightly here. The Nightly builds are, obviously, far less tested than the regular Preview, so be prepared for general instability and bugs if you're going that route.
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