Firefox 3.6 Alpha Just Around the Corner

At just two weeks since it was released to the public, Firefox 3.5 is old news. Mozilla is shifting its focus onto the next iteration of its open-source browser. And in this regard, the first Alpha of Firefox 3.6, codenamed Namoroka, is just around the corner. Mozilla indicated that it planned to release Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 either tomorrow, Friday, July 31, 2009, or early next week at the latest. A specific delivery deadline has yet to be set in stone. Still, on July 29 Mozilla revealed that it was planning the code freeze by the end of this month. A developer page for Firefox 3.6 is now live.

One aspect that needs to be underlined is that Mozilla is not decided on the Firefox 3.6 moniker, although it is using it in parallel with codename Namoroka. In this context, graphical user interface redesigns have been explored for both Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 4.0. According to Mozilla, for the next iteration of Firefox, the focus will be on improving performance, tweaking personalization and customization, simplifying task-based navigation, as well as enhancing web application support and system integration. Firefox 3.6 will continue to be based on the evolution of the underlying Gecko engine, which will evolve to version 1.9.2.

“Namoroka will employ a highly iterative, milestone based development process which will rely on feedback from developers, testers and users to ensure that we are properly investing time and resources. An initial exploration phase will be used to investigate development cost and benefit, as well as to create user interaction prototypes. This will be followed by an alpha development phase for early user testing and feedback, and then a beta phase for broader compatibility testing,” Mozilla noted.

Following the launch of Firefox 3.5, Mozilla released the first security and stability update, labeled Firefox 3.5.1. In parallel with version 3.6, v3.5.2 is also cooking, and is expected to drop on Monday, August 3rd, 2009.

Firefox 3.5.1 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.5.1 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.5.1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.