Firefox 4 Beta 4 is out, with Panorama and Sync

"Tab Candy" has finally come into its own in this most recent iteration of Firefox, Beta 4. The feature is now called "Panorama". Not all of Raskin's envisioned features made it, but it's still pretty dang cool.

Panorama now lets you group tabs and optionally name the groups. You can resize the groups, and when you shrink a group down to its smallest size, it becomes a "pile" and you can zoom into it by clicking a button next to it.

Another major addition is Firefox Sync. It works with its own accounts, "Firefox Sync accounts." Interestingly, it prompts you for a pass phrase in addition to a password. It's a service which syncs your history, open tabs, bookmarks, Awesomebar, etc. Sounds identical to what Google already does with Chrome, but now Firefox has it, too.

These are the two new major features in the Beta 4. The inclusion of Panorama is a big deal – it's Firefox's most innovative UI feature by far, and I think it signifies the release cycle rapidly moving to maturity for this version. You should definitely go give it a try, even if it's not ready yet for use as a full-time browser (due to lack of add-ons).

Tags: awesome, beta, browser, firefox, opensource, tabcandy