Successor Of Firefox 3.5 With More Features Is Ahead

Don't view Firefox developers as complacent, though. Performance improvements are of high importance in the successor to Firefox 3.5, called Namoroka, including fast launch speed, a Chrome advantage. The new version is scheduled for release in early to mid-2010.

Some of the new improvements for the successor of firefox 3.5:

1. Weave is a project to synchronize bookmarks, passwords, preferences, and other settings across multiple browsers, including the mobile version of Firefox, code-named Fennec. Weave also can sync personas, another new feature that lets people customize Firefox's appearance.

2. A project called Electrolysis is designed to improve isolation between different tabs and between plug-ins and tabs, improving security and reliability.

3. Jetpack is designed to be a new framework for add-ons that can be developed using Web page design standards. That's the same approach Google chose for Chrome extensions.

4. People use more and more tabs, and tab management is tougher, so work is under way to address the issue--perhaps with an automatically expanding or contracting tab list on the left edge of the browser instead of on a strip along the top.

5. Snowl is a system that tries to unify messaging operations, whether messages originate from e-mail, Web forums, RSS feeds, social networks, or other sources.

6. Ubiquity is designed to let Firefox interpret a wide range of formal or informal text commands, turning the browser into a more general window on the world.

Also, Firefox has some incumbent advantages of its own--enough market share that Web developers need to test their sites for Firefox compatibility and a range of add-ons to customize the browser, for example. Those are strong enough to keep people from rapidly switching away even if they're trying other browsers, too.