Following 12 betas and the recent RC, Mozilla has said today that Firefox 4 will be officially released on March 22nd for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Firefox 4 is most notable due to the addition of hardware-accelerated browsing.

Chrome 10 has partial acceleration and the new Internet Explorer 9 offers acceleration for users with AMD chips.

The browser features a minimalist interface, much improved JavaScript performance, increased HTML5 support (including WebM) and a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack.

Firefox 4 adds the ability to create tab groups (dubbed Panorama), and adds tab pinning, as well. Frequently used sites, like Gmail and Twitter can be created into App Tabs, which means they will pin, and glow when updated (new tweets, new emails).

As with past versions, you can sync all settings, passwords, bookmarks and open tabs to mobile devices via secured 26-character key.

Finally, the browser adds "do not track" to the "advanced" settings screen. By checking the option, you are telling sites that you do not want to be tracked for specialized advertising.

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