Mozilla’s ‘Web o’ Wonders’ Shows Off New Firefox 4 Tricks

Just ahead of the final release of Firefox 4 Mozilla has unveiled a new HTML5/CSS 3 showcase to demo some of the new web standards support coming in Firefox 4.

Google and Microsoft both released similar efforts to showcase Chrome and Internet Explorer 9, respectively. And, of course, there was Apple’s effort, but, thanks to some poor coding decisions, Apple’s showcase only works in Safari.

Mozilla’s new Web o’ Wonders website will work in any modern browser, though the video elements use the WebM codec, so you’ll need either Firefox 4, Chrome or Opera to watch the movies. Refreshingly, Mozilla’s Web o’ Wonders doesn’t conflate the various new web standards under the singular banner of HTML5 — SVG, JavaScript, CSS 3 and HTML5 are all called out separately, by name.

Right now there are only three demos on Web o’ Wonder, but Mozilla plans to add more, and you can submit your own experiments for consideration. The three experiments of the site now showcase HTML5 video, WebGL rendering and various CSS 3 and JavaScript techniques combined under the heading “design.” Particularly worth checking out is the HTML5 poster experiment which covers just about all the new HTML5, CSS 3 and JavaScript support in Firefox 4. Curious developers can click the “learn more” link to reach Mozilla’s developer page for each new feature listed.

Perhaps the best news, which arrives alongside the new demos is that Firefox 4 RC1 is just about done, with the final release likely not far behind it.