Mozilla delivered two things today: Firefox 5 for personal computers and Android phones, and the promise to complete the new browser just a few months after its predecessor.
The organization, once the leading challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, faces new challenges--notably Google's Chrome, new versions of which arrive every six weeks. Adopting a similar philosophy, Firefox now revs on a three-month cycle, and today Mozilla met its first deadline.
"The world of the Internet is moving at a faster pace than ever, so we realized we had to start innovating faster," said Mozilla Chief Executive Gary Kovacs in an online chat today to announce the product.
New features in Firefox 5 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux | Android) include the following:
• Support for CSS animations, a technology that lets Web page elements move around the screen. That's useful for more dynamic Web pages and Web apps.
• Firefox's new Add-on SDK, formerly called Jetpack. This foundation lets programmers build extensions out of Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript rather than the older XUL technology. The expected advantages: extensions will be easier to write and won't break when new browser versions arrive.
• In beta testing is the Add-on Builder, a Web-based tool designed to make writing extensions easier.
• Firefox's do-not-track technology, which lets people tell Web sites they don't want to be tracked for advertising or other purposes, now works on Android phones as well.
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