On Monday, Mozilla's Firefox director Mike Beltzner presented a webcast in which he outlined the future of the popular web browser.
Beltzner showed some concept shots of Firefox 4, which is scheduled to ship in October or November this year. He stressed that everything about Firefox 4 remains open to change between now and its release.
From what Beltzner showed, Firefox 4's tabs system will be similar to that of Chrome, in that tabs will appear above the address bar. The home button is also replaced by a tab.
One of the most interesting features of Firefox 4 is the ability to have narrow tabs that are dedicated to chosen web applications — in the case of this image, Gmail and Google Calendar have their own tabs at the left-hand side of the screen.
A key feature of Firefox 4 will be its users' enhanced control over their passwords and cookies. People will be able to see more easily the permissions they have previously granted a website.
People will also be able to allow websites to make use of their location data — Firefox is currently being ported to mobile devices, with a version out for the Nokia N900 and a very early build out for Android.