Firefox roadmap updated
Under heavy pressure from competitive products such as Chrome and Opera, the folks at Mozilla must be sweating right now. A new roadmap that introduces altered dead lines doesn't sound too good if they are all to be considered delays.
Hope to get Firefox 3.6 released before the end of the year seems lost. The first release candidates aren't out yet and previous betas contained hundred of fixes, each. But I don't think this is something to be too harsh about, yes it's delayed, but for a good reason: stability and performance. While delays aren't fun, the move is a responsible one as many end users these days rely on Firefox. The new release is scheduled for sometime in the first quarter of next year.
As we noted before, Firefox 3.7 will not contain the theme refresh. Instead of an evolutionary design where the first round is introduced in 3.7 and the biggest impact of changes (tabs on top, removal of menu, etc.) in round two as 4.0 they've op-ed to do it all in one go. Unfortunately this will not be in 3.7, but in 4.0, which is much further away. Being one of the ugliest browsers for Windows doesn't help either, as almost none of the Aero features are supported (while Vista exists for years now). There are some good things that remain in this release though, such as plug-in process separation for Windows and Linux (currently Mac is not supported), which is similar to how Chrome and Safari 4 (on Snow Leopard) work. It will also include two extensions features in the Mozilla Labs: Weave (for bookmarks synchronization) and JetPack (for lightweight extensions, which require no restart). When Firefox 3.7 is expected is kinda vague, it's supposed to be released somewhere in 2010 now.
And last but not least, Firefox 4.0 which will include the new interface and the efforts from the Electrolysis-project (process-per-tab) may appear early 2011. Yeah that's next next year. Although in 2010 we'll see the first betas, it's awfully far away.
If this new release schedule will hold up against the aggressive competition remains to be seen. Chrome 4.0 is expected to be released in the first half of 2010 and includes extensions support, which is the number one feature that Firefox had as a weapon. Opera also showed major leaps with their 10.50 pre-alpha, using Aero to its fullest with a lightning fast JavaScript engine and software renderer.
I think Opera should be shaking in it's boots. Chromium offered a very nice fast browser, and it will now see add-ons pouring in. Sure, this is treading on Firefox territory and will steal Firefox customers.
Opera, on the other hand, has crept up from around 1% to around 2%. It is, in my opinion, held back by the lack of add-ons (though 70% or more of users don't actually add anything on to Firefox...) and I think it's barking up the wrong tree (for me) with widgets. I don't really like widgets and I don't need, or use them - I have all the information I need at my fingertips (I use conky to keep track of my system, the time and date, temperatures, memory stats, network stats, storage stats, top processes for CPU and memory...)
First steps are UI changes. For years (too many years) since the first Opera and Firefox browsers arrived, the first thing I would do is install, and then spend time setting them up. I didn't really waste time doing this to use Chromium, and the newer Opera I only changed to a slightly slimmer, bog standard version of the (already attractive) skin.
Firefox takes the most work now - though I have dropped skins there too, I still have to set up Tinymenu, gestures, tabs, and other basic UI fixes to make it handle properly. (With Chromium, I mouse over tabs, then roll the mouse wheel to change tabs, with Opera I have to hold a mouse button and roll the wheel)
I'm interested to see where Mozilla take things. Happy that they released 3.5 alphas, alongside 3.6 and 3.7 - but are really focussing on a much larger change simultaneously, because that's what Chrome brought - a new animal entirely.
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