"While it's impossible to sum up the thousands of enhancements and bug fixes both big and small, the Firefox 4 beta version brings the browser that much closer to taking over everything on the desktop. There are fewer reasons for anyone to interact with an extra plug-in or the operating system. Remember when people cared about whether a machine was Windows or Mac or a Commodore 64? Remember when software needed to be written in native code? Those days are fading away quickly as the browser is more able than ever before to deliver most of the content we might want.

You've no doubt heard about or even seen Firefox 4's new Chrome-like interface. More important are the many new features generally lumped together under the catchall standard HTML5, a specification that's still a draft but has become more of a rallying cry for AJAX, JavaScript, endless tags, and life beyond plug-ins."