Yesterday, Mozilla released a beta version of its Firefox web browser. This is the first offering from the company’s new quick release plan which is aimed at offering new features to web developers and the browser users sooner than they normally are. The most talked about new feature in Firefox 5 beta is the support for CSS animations in the browser. These animations allow web developers to add new graphically fluid motions in tasks such as opening pop up dialogue boxes and switching among pictures. According to the release notes for the new browser, the version 5 also includes updates to JavaScript, memory, canvas and networking.
Many see this as relatively small and minor list of updates for a new version of the browser; however it looks like Mozilla is now following on the footsteps of Google in releasing new versions of Firefox more rapidly but without making many changes between two versions, as is the case with Chrome. This means that unlike the past releases of Firefox, new version numbers now won’t mean a whole new browser, only some evolutionary changes.
Three main versions of Firefox are functional at the moment, the release version which is meant for the mainstream users, the beta version which includes new features and is under testing and the Aurora version which is the rawest of the three and is meant to try out the new features. These three versions correspond with Google Chrome’s stable, beta and dev release versions. There is another version of Firefox which lets users to try out the latest developments in the browser to have arrived in the last 24 hours; however this one is usually not stable. The new schedule program means that every small development which is made on a schedule can immediately be shipped out in the new releases.
