Mozilla Firefox to launch improved version 4 soon
The team leader of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, In an attempt to spark some momentum for Mozilla's open-source Web browser, delivered a Web video presentation on Monday night outlining the product's plans for the near future.
THE TEAM leader of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, In an attempt to spark some momentum for Mozilla's open-source Web browser, delivered a Web video presentation on Monday night outlining the product's plans for the near future.
Apple, too, has made waves lately with its Safari browser, a version of which is included in its hot CE devices, the iPhone and iPad. Beltzner listed the three main goals of the plan, to make Firefox fast, as in super-duper fast; powerful, enabling new open, standard Web technologies (HTML5 and beyond); and empowering, putting users in full control of their browser, data, and Web experience. Beltzner noted that Firefox 3.7 would be ditched in favor of an update to 3.6, called 3.6.4. Both use plug-ins to run in separate processes (called "Lorentz") for improved stability and security. He said unequivocally that the target was to ship version 4 by the end of the year. A beta is planned to hit by the end of June, and the final release should ship sometime from next October to November. Since the arrival of Chrome just over a year ago, Firefox's market share has stalled at just under 25 percent, and this has to concern Mozilla, whose browser had enjoyed seemingly unbridled growth over most of its five years of existence. But when questioned about this increasing pressure from competitors, Beltzer unambiguously stated, "We are in it to win it." But he went on, "It's no longer the case where it's all easy wins. There's hard work to be done here." Improving Firefox's speed was foremost among Beltzner's goals. The fact that Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview score higher than Firefox on the widely used SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark has to be a motivator for this objective. The browser's next JavaScript engine, dubbed JägerMonkey, is the first line of attack on this front. Firefox has also long trailed these competitors in the time it takes to open the browser app. Beltzner noted that not only does he want Firefox to run faster, but that the interface should be simplified so that it would "seem" faster.
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