Firefox 7 and the Rapid Release Schedule

Earlier in the year Mozilla announced that with the release of Firefox 6, they will start aiming at an 18 week development cycle.  Essentially meaning every 18 weeks the next version of Firefox will be released.  So, in the spirit of updating, I finally updated my Firefox to version 6.0.2 just the other day (I use many web browsers, so updating sometimes gets neglected).

And today, I decided to jump back into Firefox for a few minutes and guess what?  Yep, a new update is ready that will bounce my Firefox up to version 7.  What is included in the latest version of Firefox?

-On the web developer side, Mozilla has included some extra tools to help with HTML5 features using hardware-acceleration for things like games and animations, etc.  And developers now have access to native Firefox tools that will measure page load time versus traffic, user bandwidth, etc.

-An opt-in feature called Telemetry is now included.  This feature allows Firefox on a user's computer to feed data back to Mozilla concerning the way version 7 runs on the various types of computer hardware out there in the world. I usually turn this option off myself when other apps prompt for this type of feature.  But for those who choose to participate, you will essentially be providing benchmarks for Mozilla to consider when it comes to future releases of their web browser.

-User's will notice Firefox 7 includes more efficient memory management.  Not that big of a deal if you typically only open a tab or two and only casually surf the web.  But for those of us who populate our web browsers with tabs and open pages (my Chrome browser currently has 7 open tabs, and I'm just getting warmed up); will notice quicker navigation and tab switching.

So, with the release of version 7, we already have several decent updates (especially if you are a web developer).  Also, Mozilla is shooting for near perfect compatibility with Browser Add-Ons from version 6 with the release of Firefox 7.  Chances are you may have already downloaded it; however it you didn't be sure to click on:
1- Help (in the menu bar)
2- Click on 'About Firefox'

And the 'About Firefox' dialog box will check your version against the latest release on their servers and download accordingly.  And if you haven't downloaded Firefox yet, I'd highly recommend it.  So head on over to Mozilla.org or click on:







Happy Surfing!