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Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011
Firefox's official roadmap has been updated, and boy are there some interesting changes afoot. Most notably, Firefox 7 will ship in 2011. The second biggy, and the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser.As far as feature sets go, this is what the roadmap looks like: Firefox 5 will absorb the Account Manager and F1 Simple Sharing add-ons to become built-in features. It looks like Windows 7 64-bit will be officially supported with FF5, too.
Firefox 6 will have a focus on the Web applications framework, JavaScript optimizations, and support for OS X 10.7. For Web applications, some missing pieces of CSS3 and HTML5 will be added to Gecko, the rendering engine.
Firefox 7's feature list is less clear. Electrolysis (splitting everything into separate processes) and changes to XBL support are mentioned, but nothing certain.
Overall, there's a big emphasis on responsiveness and "shining the primary UI until it gleams."
It'll definitely be interesting to see how Mozilla transitions to a new release cycle -- and it'll definitely mean a lot more Firefox-related news, too!
Update: some conscientious eyes have noticed that the roadmap says 'Draft' at the top, so this could all change...
Comments
36
Subscribe to commentsDavid LevineFeb 7th 2011 9:34AM
I'm glad to see Mozilla taking this approach. Hopefully it does not reduce the quality of their releases and they'll be able to catch up with Chrome.
SteveFeb 8th 2011 9:20PM
@David Levine
jeffkwapilFeb 7th 2011 9:54AM
Windows 7 64-bit will be officially supported with FF5
??
I started using Win 7 with the first public beta and I've never seen any problem with Firefox and Windows 7 64-bit.
David AtkinsonFeb 7th 2011 10:24AM
@jeffkwapil I think he means Mozilla is going to start releasing stable 64-bit builds. Right now they're all 32-bit. They run fine on 64-bit builds of Windows, but they're not actually 64-bit versions of Firefox.
Abhinendra ReddyFeb 8th 2011 1:20PM
@jeffkwapil
bigjohntFeb 8th 2011 8:01PM
@jeffkwapil
Well, Win7 supports x86 programs anyhow.
correnos@gmail.comFeb 8th 2011 10:36PM
@jeffkwapil
Sebastian AnthonyFeb 7th 2011 10:25AM
@David Atkinson No, there are 64-bit builds, but only nightlies!
As far as I understand, this means there'll be 'real' 64-bit builds on the main Firefox download page.
XenoFeb 7th 2011 11:54AM
@Sebastian Anthony - So this is why Firefox keeps crashing on me when ever it's idle?
RandyNFeb 7th 2011 10:47AM
Based on how long it's taking Mozilla to release Firefox 4, I have to believe that these will not be major version bumps (I'm guessing Firefox 5 = 4.1, Firefox 6 = 4.2, etc.).
Sebastian AnthonyFeb 7th 2011 10:48AM
@RandyN No -- that's what I thought initially, as well. But it's actual major version bumps. Mozilla is changing the whole release cycle. (This is all but confirmed from sources at Mozilla.)
ChrisSskFeb 7th 2011 1:37PM
@RandyN
I actually think they are fixing their error of going from 3 to 3.5 to 3.6, they should have called 3.5 Firefox 4 and 3.6 Firefox 5. Each release had enough new features to justify a version bump.
Also there are FF4 features that are ready for months now but are just sitting there until everything is ready for the release. With this new release cycle as soon as something is ready it will be shipped
Stinky PetersonFeb 7th 2011 9:12PM
@Sebastian Anthony
I don't get why they're doing this. Do they want to make it seem as though they're speeding things up, and that they're getting things done much more quickly so as to keep their user base? And I don't understood why Chrome has been doing this as well.
matricks54Feb 9th 2011 9:51AM
@Sebastian Anthony
I can't stand when people say "and this something something is all but confirmed"
Translated your comment would read: "This is not confirmed by Mozilla." So why bother reiterating the article?
AemonyFeb 7th 2011 10:50AM
I'm looking forward to this a lot!
Though I only hope they do the separate processes thingy better than Chrome does. When something in Chrome crashes EVERYTHING crashes, at least that's the behaviour for me all those times the web browser has crashed. But anyway, having crashes that still crashes every process the browser uses is kinda against the point of having separate processes in the first place...
No clue why Google can't get it right, but I hope Firefox does.
SilverWaveFeb 7th 2011 3:32PM
@Aemony
Ah.. How the hell do you manage to crash Chrome?
KualaBeeFeb 7th 2011 8:56PM
@Aemony It happens. I am pretty minimalist user with Chrome disabling all third party plugins with the exception of Chrome integrated flash it has crashed. It's rare, but when it does I remember b/c i make a mental note of "wasn't chrome with its separate processes supposed to..."
KeegdnaBFeb 7th 2011 10:51AM
At first I was like "oh they're just trying to be more like chrome" but then I realized....that's a good thing.
Microsoft stepped up their game with IE9 and now Mozilla, whose royally dropped the ball with FF4 is getting back on it.
JeffreyFeb 7th 2011 11:15AM
They're also going to try to fix their responsiveness problems. Which should be interesting considering they use a scripting language (XUL+javascript) for their user interface. They essentially have to make Javascript run like C++.
ChrisSskFeb 7th 2011 1:16PM
@Jeffrey Thats part of the Electrolysis project. with separate processes to display the browser UI, web content, and plugins the responsiveness problems should be resolved