Although having the second-most popular browser, Mozilla has lost some of its shine in recent years, mostly due to the lower execution speed compared to the likes of Google and also Opera. As of this year Mozilla aims to turn things around and fire from as many cannons as possible to gain users.
Among the priorities set by Mozilla for 2011 is a significantly increased development speed that would see major versions come out at a faster pace. Firefox 4 has already been delayed from late 2010 to Q1 2011 but Firefox 5, 6 and 7 are planned to be introduced before we'll be celebrating 2012.
Delivering four major releases in a single year is surely a major undertaking but Mozilla believes that it's possible if the development strategy is rethinked so as to focus on offering more precise updates. For example, for Firefox 5, the proposed goodies include the Account Manager (which was dropped from FF 4 last year), 'simple sharing UI', UI animations, and 64bit support on Windows, while for Firefox 6 the sketches talk about web apps, FasterCache, JavaScript optimizations and support for Mac OS X 10.7 (codename Lion).
This year Mozilla also plans to build Web Apps, Identity and Social into the Open Web Platform, polish the user experience and support new hardware and operating systems like those mentioned above plus Android 3.0. Busy year.
