14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla, the company behind one of the most popular browsers available all around the world, is reportedly rethinking its strategy regarding the release of future versions of the application. It has just pushed out the Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) flavor of the browser, and is expected to soon deliver the final flavor of 3.6 to users, after which one should only expect it to release another major version of Firefox, namely 4.0, with no interim variant in between.
The company was said not too long ago to plan on launching Firefox 3.6 to the market in early 2010, followed by the Firefox 3.7 version, a rather minor version update, with the major revamp set to arrive late this year with Firefox 4.0. However, it seems that its original plans, which included the launch of 3.6 in November 2009, suffered delays, and that this drove Mozilla into reconsidering its release scheme, which now includes less versions. Firefox 3.7 has been dropped, and 4.0 is up next, after the final 3.6 arrives, of course.
Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, reportedly stated in a recent interview that Mozilla plans on including new functionality through the regular security updates, which are delivered every four to six weeks, something that, according to pcworld, suggests that Firefox 3.7 has been dropped from the scheme. “I'm proud of how we challenged ourselves,” said Beltzner. “We learned an awful lot about what slows down our schedule, and that will help us plan future releases.” It seems that the company will deliver behind-the-scenes capabilities to Firefox via the already mentioned security updates, and 3.7 had no place in the new plans.
One of these updates Firefox will enjoy this year was codenamed Lorentz. “The first target for [a minor update] will be separation of plug-in processes from the browser,” revealed Beltzner. One project that Mozilla is working on at the moment includes the running of each tab as a separate process, something that would prevent one site to crash the entire browser. However, the separation of processes for specific plug-ins, such as Adobe's Flash, which is responsible for most crashes on Firefox, is something the company is working on separately.
“This will be a huge advantage to users,” said Beltzner, talking about the Lorentz concept. “We were thinking earlier that the first time we would be able to add [plug-in process separation] would be 3.7 in the middle of the year. But the change we need to make is very isolated, and has no effect on Web compatibility or add-on compatibility or on the user experience. So we thought, 'Why not deliver it as part of a minor update?'”
Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) for Windows is available for download here. Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) for Mac OS X is available for download here. Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) for Linux is available for download here.