14 DAY TRIAL // The Mozilla Foundation is working on a new platform called Idea Town which would allow their developers to launch and test upcoming beta-level features on their stable release channel.
This new feature, formerly known as Idea Lab in early June, is planned for early integration with Firefox 40 and is expected to be fully functional by Firefox 42.
Idea Town will allow regular Firefox users to enter an opt-in program, and test experimental features without having to install buggy Firefox nightly builds.
Everything will be handled inside their stable Firefox release, and they can choose what upcoming features to install, test, and even give feedback on.
None of the tested features will have a guaranteed spot in upcoming Firefox releases, and Mozilla hopes to leverage the user feedback it will be getting from the real Firefox audience to avoid situations like the Tab Group debacle, a feature which it was forced to start pulling back after very few users actually used it.
Idea Town will be used only for testing major new Firefox features
According to the Mozilla Idea Town GitHub repo, "Idea Town is not intended to replace the trains for the vast majority of features. Rather, it is reserved for those features that require a high degree of fine tuning and user feedback prior to general release."
This means you won't see the whole shabang of low-level features and Web standards implementations, but only the major UI and UX changes that will severely alter how users interact with Firefox on a daily basis, and for which Mozilla will be needing more feedback that its nightly build audience can offer.
An official website for Idea Town will be available in early August when Firefox 40 launches, website that can be used to sign-up and give feedback when the Idea Town platform will be shipping around November with Firefox 42.
