Firefox 5 released - First rapid release version from Mozilla

With the release of Firefox 5 on 21st June, Mozilla also kept its promise to complete the new browser just a few months after its predecessor. Mozilla, once the leading challenger to Microsoft's IE, faces new challenges from Google's Chrome, with new version released every six weeks. Adopting a similar philosophy, Firefox now works on a three-month cycle, and today Mozilla met its first deadline. The concept behind quick release is to innovate faster as the world wide web is evolving at lightening speed.

New features in Firefox 5 include the following:

• Support for CSS animations, a technology that lets Web page elements move around the screen. That's useful for more dynamic Web pages and Web apps.

• Firefox's new Add-on SDK, formerly called Jetpack. This foundation lets programmers build extensions out of Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript rather than the older XUL technology. The expected advantages: extensions will be easier to write and won't break when new browser versions arrive.

• In beta testing is the Add-on Builder, a Web-based tool designed to make writing extensions easier.

• Firefox's do-not-track technology, which lets people tell Web sites they don't want to be tracked for advertising or other purposes, now works on Android phones as well.

• Canvas, which adds two-dimensional graphics technology to browsers, runs faster now, and adheres better to the official specification.

• Mozilla worked on performance in various other areas, including JavaScript and launch time.

• On Android, Firefox 5 now supports the Web Open Font Format for downloadable typefaces to embellish Web pages.

• Also on Android, panning around a Web page should be smoother.

After huge success for Firefox 4(more than 200 millions downloads), the new version is not expected to dramatically different from earlier release because of faster release cycle. But with this release Mozilla Team has earned two vital reasons to celebrate.