Originally slated to appear last month, then delayed until December, Beta 8 of the open-source browser first appeared today, a day later than planned, on Mozilla's official download site and as updates for existing preview users.

The newest beta includes simplified setup for Firefox Sync, Mozilla's bookmark, password and open tabs synchronization service; additional Windows and Mac graphics card support for WebGL, the under-development standard for 3-D graphics rendering; and a revamped extension manager that .

According to Mozilla, Beta 8 also sports more than 1,400 bug fixes or changes from its predecessor, which .

Although Mozilla once said it would wrap up work on Firefox 4 this year, delays this fall forced the company to . Currently, Mozilla plans to produce at least two more betas -- it won't finalize a timetable for Beta 9 until after Jan. 1 -- and then a series of "release candidates" before greenlighting the code.

Beta 8 also was slightly faster than Beta 7 in rendering JavaScript.