Today it appears as if Mozilla has decided to completely change the way they release new versions of Firefox. They have removed Firefox 3.7 from the development schedule and added a completely new process in its place. Updates will be released more frequently which add new features and security; these updates will be released every “four to six weeks” rather than with the bigger updates. Major releases, such as Firefox 4.0 due for release at the end of the year, will be rarer.
Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, thought that the old way of releasing updates was too slow and when many features were released at the same time, show-stopping bugs were more likely to appear. With the new process bugs will be less likely and we will get new features much faster, such as the new updated “Lorentz” which will put add-ons in a separate process to reduce the chance of a crash.
If you’re wondering where the next Firefox disappeared to, Firefox 3.7 will become just another normal update in the new 4-6 week update schedule. Firefox 3.6 is on-schedule and will be released sometime in the next week or so.
