Wow, I just installed Firefox 4 – and it’s definetly much, much, much faster than my last 3.6.x install. In Google Maps, the tiles are loaded almost instantly. Other webpages I have visited so far have also a much better responsiveness.

The user interface of the new Firefox has been inspired a lot by Google’s Chrome/Chromium. For example, when you hover a link with your mouse, the URL is not shown as tooltip, but in the left bottom corner of the browser. This may seem irritating, if you usually like to know where you’re going next and have to go to a totally different area of your screen, and back. But it’s helpful for “rich” applications who want to display their own tooltips and other information in the context of the pointer.

The upper area of the the browser window looks cleaner, too: There are no more navigation buttons except back/forward. The home button has disappeared, which also makes sense: I guess that the majority of users wouldn’t even know what website is behind that button, because they have many favourites. The stop/reload button is now part of the address bar. I like that too, but only as the stop button is red while loading a page. It is important to give users the ability to stop the loading as soon as possible if they see that they’re on the wrong webpage.

All in all: The first impression of Firefox 4 is very great: Fast browsing and a modern UI.