Jun 21, 2011 14:43 GMT  ·  By

After three months of development and a release candidate version that's been available over the weekend that everyone pinned as the final build, Firefox 5 is finally officially launched. The latest version of the popular web browser is the fastest iteration yet, though it's the first of many since Mozilla wants a new major version launched every six weeks.

While Firefox 5 is an important milestone, the first in the rapid release cycle, the first to get automatic add-on compatibility and so on, for the regular user, it's not much of an update.

Under the old version scheme, it would have been labeled as Firefox 4, but this will be the standard moving forward, small updates and few features coming every few weeks.

"Today, three months after the release of Firefox 4, we release Firefox 5, thanks to our new development cycle. Developers will be able to create richer animations using CSS3 Animations. This release comes with various improvements, performance optimization and bug fixes," Mozilla announced.

Still, Firefox 5 is a worthwhile update to Firefox 4, if only for the performance improvements and fixes to the major release. Things are looking better under the hood, Firefox comes with the latest web technology.

It introduces support for CSS3 Animations, a new technology which enables graphically rich animations using CSS alone and follows on the footsteps of CSS3 Transitions.

Firefox 5 also includes full support for the "Do-not-track" header which signals to advertisers that the user does not want his profile and browsing to be tracked for targeting advertising or anything similar.

Developers looking for the nitty-gritty details of what's new in Firefox 5, in areas such as HTML5, WebGL, canvas and so on can check out the Mozilla Hacks post which lists many of the additions.
Firefox 5 for Windows is available for download here. Firefox 5 for Linux is available for download here. Firefox 5 for Mac is available for download here.