Firefox is rapidly being tuned for mobile devices, and smartphones and tablets represent a huge market opportunity for the browser. We’ve also noted Mozilla’s charge that Internet Explorer’s latest revision is “two years too late.” But perhaps the biggest news on the Mozilla front is that the company has committed to a rapid development cycle, where it never had one before. Specifically, Mozilla plans to release a whopping four versions of Firefox by the end of this year. That is definitely an answer to the rapid-fire release schedule that Google Chrome has been on.
Release Date Moved
Last month, Damon Sicore, Mozilla’s director of platform engineering, said that the open-source company was shooting for a February release of the Firefox 4 final code. At that time, Sicore said 160 hard blockers remained, and that developers would “ideally finish the hard blockers by the beginning of February.”
12th And Final Beta
Earlier this month, Mozilla seemed pretty confident that the 12th Firefox 4 beta would be the final test iteration, after originally mulling the prospect of a pushing out a 13th beta. “As of now, beta 12 is the last planned beta,” Mozilla’s Christian Legnitto wrote last week. “We reserve the right to have a beta 13 if issues found in beta 12 need additional coverage before a release candidate (RC).”
Changed Its Looks
You can tell that a software has changed by the way it looks. In the case of Firefox 4, it has changed a lot, but a resemblance to Google Chrome is pretty clear. The design looks slightly different on Windows XP than it does on Windows 7. The new design is more obvious on Windows 7.
Other Changes
The title bar has disappeared and the tab bar is visible in place of the Firefox title bar. All this ensures more workspace in the browser window and less for the toolbars. If you need to access the menu bar, it can be quickly activated by the press of the Alt key. Some other changes are visible such as the larger Back and Forward buttons and also the Bookmarks dropdown menu button. Even the status bar at the bottom of the window is smaller, and hidden except when a page loads.
