Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 late last month. The release was important for them as they had to respond to the challenge posed by both Google Chrome and Apple Safari.
Every web browser in the market has been focusing on the speed aspect to prove its superiority.
Google Chrome started the tread and Safari and Opera have responded with their own updates.
Mozilla Firefox 3.5 comes with a new JavaScript engine named TraceMonkey which makes it much faster on Web 2.0 websites.
The next major update is now scheduled for sometime next year. Mozilla Firefox 3.6 has been codenamed Namoroka.
Some of the focus areas of this new version are expected to be:
Improved performance (Specifically on the user interface side like startup time)
Improved personalization
More options for customization
Enhanced navigation facilities
Improved support for web applications (integration with Mozilla Prism)
Taskfox
Improved session management (Opera has a lead here)
Improved identity management
And an updated and more useful new tab page (Opera, Chrome and Safari all have more useful new tab pages)
Google Chrome is likely to give Firefox developers nightmares in the coming months. Google has been releasing new releases on a monthly basis. New features and enhancements are released to dev channel users almost on a weekly basis.
It remains to be seen how our web browsers would be like in one year time from now.
