Update: Firefox 5 released!, Firefox 6 on August 18

Mozilla has further detailed its new development model for Firefox. The current draft says Firefox 5 will arrive on June 21, 2011 and Firefox 6 will be released on August 18, 2011. These dates may change, but they're what the company is currently aiming for.

All changes to Firefox source code are initially integrated in the mozilla-central Mercurial repository. At scheduled intervals (typically 6 weeks), the changes are imported from mozilla-central to one of three other channels (larger features and projects are usually initially developed in other repositories which track mozilla-central). In addition to mozilla-central (currently referred to as nightly), there will also be firefox-experimental, firefox-beta, and Firefox (release), each backed by its own Mercurial repository. These names are currently placeholders and Mozilla may still change them.



The firefox-experimental channel will get new features at regular intervals, but some of them might be disabled if they look like they need more work. The beta channel receives only new features that are slated for the next Firefox release. New features are never directly added to the firefox-experimental or firefox-beta channels. In general, each stage of the process (and activity pertaining to a particular version) will last for 6 weeks, but because of the development overlap, we can expect a new version every 6 to 12 weeks.



Firefox 5 (pictured above) will be slightly different from future releases due to the lack of a development overlap with Firefox 4. Mozilla announced last month that Firefox 4, Firefox 5, Firefox 6, and Firefox 7 would all ship in 2011. That looked nearly impossible after the delays of Firefox 4, but with this new schedule, the company may manage after all.


Source

 

Well at some point they had to get serious when faced with the threat of Chrome eroding their customer base. Lets hope all HTML 5 standards work properly by the end of the year.

 

[rant]
what? eroding what?
Let's take a look at some numbers...
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

See who is number one?
See who was number one?
See who is rapidly growing?
Figure out who eroded from who yet?

Don't expect the trend to continue unless Chrome steps up its game to compete with the likes of IE and Firefox. But for now, the battle is between Chrome and IE for second place. THAT is where the erosion has been happening. The fact is Chrome's strength is it's weakness ala webkit. Until Google decides to spearhead its own rendering engine it really can't compete on an even playing field. When it does, it really wont be that lightweight anymore now would it
[/rant]

Personally I find the timeline a bit ridiculous, but there is no denying it. Shorter iterations produce better software. If Mozilla has the resources to make this happen, it's likely to stir up some trouble.

 

The number one is past it's peak and in steady decline. The numbers show that Firefox's growth hit the wall once Chrome became more stable. Only one browser is seeing significant growth ie. Chrome. Yes, it's not just eroding from Firefox, it's also taking from IE but that's a dead horse named default.

 

I still can't appreciate chrome for some reason.... FF ftw!

 

Probably because it doesn't do what you need it to?

 

what he said

 

Guess which web browser is sticking to it's aggressive release cycle?

That's right!

Source: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/5.0/releasenotes/

 

I crossed back over from Chrome a few weeks ago. Firefox just has more functionality. I even made it look like Chrome since I like their take on the minimalistic interface. This 5.0 Firefox seems to be faster on loading pages.

Chrome is what you install on default IE (old people, noobs) PC because it has everything built in, auto updates and it just works.

 

Firefox 8 is here!

Firefox is just so full of win!

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/8.0/releasenotes/

All the cool mozilla labs addons are now perfected and available out of the box! GOGOGO!