The folks at Mozilla finally unveiled a new roadmap for Firefox, which has been vague after the release of Firefox 3.6. Where first were talks of Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 4.0, there is now only one.

Logically the one to survive is Firefox 4.0, which is aimed to be released this year. Firefox 3.7 is no more, and the top changes of that release are scattered around other releases. For instance Firefox 3.6.4 actually contains the plug-in process separation (like Safari 4), while the theme changes require more time and will appear in Firefox 4.

With the increased competition from Chrome and Opera, but also Internet Explorer and Safari, several main goals have been set for the upcoming release. Being the second most popular web browser, that is not part of some major corporation can be though, but if most of the features will make it in the final release, there's still a lot going for.

First is of course the new theme. Firefox 4 will finally use Aero Glass in Windows Vista and 7 and less screen space, while the Mac release will look more like Safari or Finder, which less dominating buttons. Platform integration has been important for Firefox 3, but they surely lacked in the Windows department with this (Mac and Linux variants look decent).

Speed is the most important thing today, with Chrome and Opera fighting with each other for the speed king crown, Safari is always close by as a third. The team at Microsoft is working hard to unlock the power of the GPU to accelerate IE9 (which will also have a newish JavaScript engine), while WebKit developers work in silence on the upcoming WebKit2. Firefox made TraceMonkey in the later releases, but this engine simply couldn't compete directly in all the benchmarks with Chrome's V8, Opera's Carakan or Safari's Nitro. So instead the folks at Mozilla are looking at the competition, and what's that, they are actually thinking of using parts of WebKit's JavaScript engine (which Apple calls Nitro) to patch those nasty slow parts and dubbed it JaegerMonkey. But who said Microsoft couldn't innovate? Firefox 4 for Windows will get Direct2D support to enhance rendering speed (something we might see in some later release in Opera through their Vega library.

Other changes that are planned for Firefox 4 are: Jetpack (a more simple extensions framework, that does not require reboots for instance), HTML5 and other new web technologies, a new add-on manager, Aero Peek, Aero overlays, 64-bit support, and much, much more.

According to the preliminary roadmap we can expect a first beta somewhere at the end of June, which will be followed by a long range of beta releases, with an expected release date in October/November. Exciting indeed, to see some really big changes from Mozilla!

Not much to say here, but a new release of Firefox 3.6 was made purely to address the recently demonstrated exploit in the Pwn2Own contest.

Due to the critical nature of the exploit, the developers of Firefox made the decision to release a new version solely to address it. Suffice to say that this is a highly recommended update. The exploit uses a memory corruption flaw to execute code, which occurs in the Garbage Collector for DOM.

All users are recommended to update, which should occur automatically. If you haven't seen an update notice yet you can trigger it from the Help menu. Of course you can also download the entire file.

Skipping a release, Mozilla has issued an update for Firefox bringing it up to 3.6.2. This (semi) standard maintenance release contains mostly fixes to polish the current stable release.

Although no direct explanation is given on why this is 3.6.2 instead of 3.6.1, which actually gives more ammo for Google approach for Chrome of making it irrelevant for the end user, it does contain some interesting bits that we all want.

As this is the first maintenance release of Firefox 3.6 it fixes a large series of stability bugs that have affected people. However most importantly is are the security issues that have been addressed, of which one critical. This critical issue could allow remote code execution and therefor makes this release a highly recommended update.

As always, if Firefox doesn't pick up the update you can trigger it from the Help menu. If you want the entire download you can get it from the usual place for all supported platforms.

The Mozilla Labs have released the final version of Mozilla Weave, the Firefox and Fennec extension to synchronize user data amongst all your Firefox powered devices.

Of course alternatives like Xmarks (formely Foxmarks) already existed for a long time, Weave is more than just bookmarks synchronization (although not really cross browser). Mozilla Weave is all about user data in the cloud, meaning your bookmarks, preferences, passwords, history and tabs. The beauty of it is that Mozilla Labs both offers the extension for clients to use with Mozilla's servers, as well as the server portion to host it yourself (for you, family and friends for instance). Of course syncing your passwords sounds scary, but Mozilla Weave uses encryption to make sure all your personal data is safe.

You can download Mozilla Weave from the add-ons page; in the future expect even more elaborate synchronization with the cloud, such as your installed add-ons (yay!) and a possible inclusion in future Firefox releases. Mozilla Weave is a recommended download for Firefox users, as it transcends both Chrome's bookmarks sync as well as Opera Link in form and function and keeps your data safe.

Google may be the biggest competitor to Microsoft on a whole scale of non traditional ways, but one thing is definitely true, they are pushing new technologies where they can.

Where Apple dominated the new wave of touch-screen mobile devices, Android is opening up the market by exposing a similar OS albeit with multi-tasking and customization. In the same approach not pleased with the slow development of Firefox (hey where is that new update approach coming from Mozilla, and why?) they introduced a new way of browsing the web with the fastest JS performance and multi-processes.

Today is the day that they push technology in another way, though with a sharp edge to it. We already know that HTML 5 comes with the video-tag and that there have been arguments about whether support for the different encoders should be part of the specification. Currently encoders don't play a role, and Google opted for the most superior encoder out there, but with a cost.

H.264 is the new standard to be used for Google's latest HTML 5 experiment for YouTube, but the thing is only Chrome (Frame) and Safari support it. H.264 requires that you pay a certain sum, and although Mozilla must have the money (from the Google search deal), they do not support it, heck they only support the open-source OGG format.

Anyway, if you have Chrome (Frame) or Safari, you can now enjoy the HTML 5 video-tag without the need for Flash, and with perhaps better quality at the new YouTube page. You can opt-in here if you have a supported browser.

After months of hard work the combined forces of the open-source community under the Mozilla banner have released the next version of Firefox. While the version number may not imply it, the amount of changes is significant under the hood.

Finally it's here, the final release of Firefox 3.6, which helps the furry web browser to position itself better against the fierce competition, of which the ever evolving Chrome might be the biggest on the radar.

For performance the JavaScript engine has been increased, but also updated to work asynchronously when loading the page, decreasing the start-up time. On the other hand a lot of effort was put into making the UI of the web browser, which runs on XUL in the rendering engine, more responsive while loading content.

Standards support for CSS, DOM and HTML 5 has also expended including most noticeably support for the WOFF font format.

Other changes include tighter security for add-ons (preventing crashes), alerts for out-of-date plugins, full screen video-tag support, integrated light weight themes (known as Personas), and much more.

As noted before Firefox 3.6 may very well mark a new milestone. With Firefox 3.7 possibly removed from the road map as a traditional release milestone, the coming months may be filled with small updates that include (under the hood) improvements until we reach the release of Firefox 4.0 with a new look and feel.

Firefox users are recommended to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 and can do so by downloading the full installer from the official Mozilla web site.

Previously we've already heard that theme changes for Firefox were dropped from 3.7 altogether and are purely being focused for the 4.0 release. But now it seems that there's more going on...

Once Firefox 3.6 is released sometime this month (hopefully) there may not be a successor this year. Yup, Firefox 3.7 might be canned, and although we might see the first beta's of Firefox 4.0 at the end of this year, the final release is probably coming in the beginning of 2011, leaving a big gap, or not?

Well, apparently Mozilla has the plan to introduce some of the Firefox 3.7 features into 3.6. For instance we'll see the full scale of Electrolysis (separate processes for plug-ins and tabs, like Chrome) in 4.0, but over the course of time this year we'll get minor feature updates for 3.6 of which one is plug-in process isolation (like Safari 4 on Snow Leopard). Risky changes that might affect the user experience, such as a new theme, or other GUI changes are not part of these minor updates though.

Whether it will pay off remains to be seen, but it definitely seems like a better way to have regular releases especially with the aggressive release cycle that Chrome has. With the automated test system and branches for small projects (that integrate into the main branch) they hope to hold a tight enough grip, to not cause major regressions.

Update: Corrected story to indicate this is the most likely plan to be executed, see for more details the response from Mike Beltzner.

Later than expected, but as promised the first release candidate of the (minor) upgrade for Firefox is here. This release should be at an almost golden state, meaning that perhaps another build may role out, perhaps not if it's stable enough.

Compared to beta 5 there have been 70 bugs fixed alone, still showing a large number of polishing that has happened. All in all this should result in one of the most stable releases of Firefox yet!

If you've forgotten, Firefox 3.6 may sound minor, but does contain some major alterations all things considered. Such changes are how add-ons are handled, making Firefox safer and less crash prawn if they behave badly. But also the ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times, built-in Personas extension (for simple skinning), plug-in version detection and notification, WOFF font format, support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies, improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and start-up time.

Although not intended yet for the common end-user, this release candidate is of such quality that it can be safely used, give or take a little bug or so. Be sure to check and report any issues you may find, so the folks at Mozilla can make this their best release yet!

The folks at Mozilla released a new version of their main web browser, Firefox 3.5. In this seventh update the usual stuff is included to make this a recommended update for all users.

According to the release notes the two major changes are related to: a fix for a common stability issue and a fix to how updates are presented to users.

These rather vague descriptions are however backed by a bug list with three highly technical fixes: DNS resolution in MakeSN of nsAuthSSPI causing issues for proxy servers that support NTLM auth, [Win] Topcrasher for Firefox 3.5.1 [@ memmove | nsTArray_base::ShiftData(unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int)][@ nsObserverList::FillObserverArray, and do not use background notification for major updates (was PMU 3.0->3.5 major update has been really poor).

As always the update should happen automatically for Firefox 3.5 users (or can be triggered through Help > Check for Updates). If you don't have Firefox or want the full binary, you can download it from the official Mozilla site.