Mozilla’s Director of firefox, Mike Beltzner, has updated his personal blog with information about the upcoming Firefox 4 release. The product plan for Firefox 4 outlines the primary goals for Firefox 4 and aims to clear some of the confusion that surrounds the current versioning of the web browser.
The blog post is actually a summary of a presentation that is available as a slideshow and video as well.
The most important announcement concerns the versioning. Beltzner basically states that the developers managed to implement the out of process plugin feature that was initially planned for Firefox 3.7 into the soon to be released Firefox 3.6.4. This effectively allowed the developers to turn Firefox 3.7 into Firefox 3.6.4.
This means that there will be no Firefox 3.7 release. The developers will make the jump directly to Firefox 4 with a first beta release expected in June 2010 and the release candidate 1 in October 2010.
The primary goals for Firefox 4 will be making a browser:
Fast: making Firefox super-duper fast
Powerful: enabling new open, standard Web technologies (HTML5 and beyond!),
Empowering: putting users in full control of their browser, data, and Web experience.
Planned features of Firefox 4:
- Performance optimizations
- New optimized theme
- Updates and installations without restarting the browser
- Control over website permissions and relationship status
- Jetpack based add-ons running out of process
- New web development tools, HTML5 and web technology support, native multimedia capabilities
- 64-bit support
- startup optimization, reduced I/O operations, DOM performance improvements, new JavaScript engine, hardware acceleration, multitouch support
You can visit Mike’s post to take a look at the slideshow presentation or watch the video of the presentation in a HTML5 video capable browser.
Related Articles:
Firefox 3.6 Beta 1Mozilla Drops Plan To Remove Firefox About Page Version
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 and Open Office 3 RC1 Released
What’s The Best Web Browser For HTML5 Video Playback?
HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Add-on
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the icons below.
Firefox developers seem to be spooked by the Google Chrome Beta series which is emerging as the fastest browser around, and now it has a healthy “extension” ecosystem.
I`ll like to see Chrome 6 vs Firefox 4 vs IE9. I think IE9 crush them this time but don`t want to see that. Chrome is progressing leaps and bounds, I think that they may add some unique features. Maybe Webkit2>Chakra>Gecko 1.9.3.