Firefox 5 marks the start of Mozilla's Attempt at a the quick release cycle. By releasing a new version of it's browser every 6 weeks They hope to match Last Google's development speed. Announced That already have Mozilla Firefox 6 and 7 Will be out later this year.
Mozilla have also Implemented a the channel system similar to the one Chrome is using. Aurora, Beta and Stable are available for Firefox, matched Dev, Beta and Stable for Chrome.
New Features
While Firefox 5 does not share the same great wealth of new additions like the previous version there are still plenty of great new features – some that are unique to Firefox.
Stirring up chatter around the net is the new ‘Do-Not-Track’ option. Firefox will prevent websites from tracking your online behaviour, and thwart targeted adverts based on your browsing history. While this feature may be very useful for paranoid users of the net, most people should appreciate the gesture as web privacy (or rather, the lack of) becomes an increasingly hot topic.
After a huge code change in Firefox 4, Mozilla claims they have made over 1,000 improvements to Firefox 5 in areas of performance and user interface usability.
General web browsing and Javascript speed has been improved, while memory usage has seen a decrease over Firefox 4.
Firefox 5 Javascript Benchmark
Thanks to Computing.co.uk for benchmark
As per usual, Mozilla have included new web standards into its latest browser. Further support for HTML 5 has been added to support Canvas, which allows web developers to render bitmaps and 2D shapes dynamically. CSS3 support has been improved by adding CSS Animations.
Verdict
While Firefox 5 has seen some minor new features, tweaks and speed improvements; there isn’t a whole lot to get excited about.
I believe we should all be excited that Firefox 5 marks the start of a new, quicker, development cycle. We will see new versions of Firefox more often, keeping up with Google’s pace and hopefully making a more competitive browser competition.
Where To Get It?
Firefox 5 can be downloaded now from the official Firefox website.
Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 users can add the Stable Firefox PPA to update their version of Firefox to 5.0:
Labels: Ubuntu
