14 DAY TRIAL // Although it has yet to ship Firefox 4.0, Mozilla is already looking ahead, and started sharing plans for the next three versions of its open source browser following the successor of Firefox 3.6. According to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s Director of Firefox, no less than four major iterations of Firefox will be provided to users by the end of 2011.
Released roughly a few months apart after Firefox 4.0 is launched, Firefox 5.0, Firefox 6.0 and Firefox 7.0 will all be made available this year.
At least this is the plan according to Mozilla’s new Product Roadmap for its open source browser.
Beltzner notes that the change was necessary in order to keep up the pace with rivals in a competitive market.
And fact is that with releases such as Internet Explorer 9 and Chrome, the browser market did get boost in terms of competitiveness.
Beltzner also shared with the public the plans for Firefox 5.0, Firefox 6.0 and Firefox 7.0, which I included below.
Obviously, Mozilla’s plans are still in the early stages and the is quite enough room for them to evolve.
“Firefox 5
• Account Manager • Simple Sharing UI • UI Animation • 64 Bit on Windows • ...anything that improves responsiveness and is ready • ...anything that improves stability and is ready • ...anything that polishes the user interface and is ready • ...anything else serving product priorities and is ready
Firefox 6
• Web Applications • FasterCache • OSX 10.7 • JS Optimizations • ...anything that improves responsiveness and is ready • ...anything that improves stability and is ready • ...anything that polishes the user interface and is ready • ...anything else serving product priorities and is ready
Firefox 7
• e10s? deXBLification? • ...anything that improves responsiveness and is ready • ...anything that improves stability and is ready • ...anything that polishes the user interface and is ready • ...anything else serving product priorities and is ready.