Firefox 4 available for download now

Firefox 4 is a go. The latest generation of the Firefox browser launched this week, and judging by the early reactions from the tech blogosphere, this could be the best Firefox yet. Among the updates included on Firefox 4: A sleek and stripped-down interface; tighter security features; and a better navigation bar, which "learns as you use it—over time, it adapts to your preferences," Mozilla reps write.

"Mozilla is very proud of Firefox 4, created by our community of thousands of volunteers worldwide," Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, told PC Magazine. "It truly is the browser for tomorrow's Web. The Internet has become the most important connection mechanism in our society, which is why we've focused on making users' Web experience as fast, modern, safe and intuitive as possible."

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Business Insider has assembled a nice compendium of the best parts of Firefox 4, including the hardware-accelerated graphics, better crash protection, and much improved speed. "Firefox boasts faster browsing speeds thanks to a new JavaScript engine," writes the team at Business Insider. "Mozilla says the browser is up to six times faster than previous versions. We've been using Firefox 4 for less than a day now, and we definitely notice an improvement."

Of course, Mozilla has plenty of hungry competitors, including Google and Microsoft. Earlier this month, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9, the newest iteration of its popular software; within 24 hours, IE 9 was downloaded 2.35 million times. To look at it another way, IE9 was downloaded 27 times a second. According to StatCounter, as of February of this year, Internet Explorer enjoyed approximately 45 percent of the global browser market.

By comparison, Firefox was perched right around the 30 percent mark. More on that here.