Mozilla has kept its promise to come out with new releases of the Firefox open-source browser on a faster schedule. The new beta version of Firefox 5 arrives just a couple months after Firefox 4 was officially released.
Mozilla recently released the Aurora development channel, which is in the pre-beta stage and allows users to test the new software features and capabilities that are more refined than the “nightly build” releases that may or may not appear in beta or final releases.
“The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster,” said Mozilla on their Aurora development channel.
Basically, Mozilla made this system to deliver Firefox updates more quickly while also giving users the opportunity to participate in building the software. Mozilla’s faster browser development schedule is intended to help the open-source organization keep pace with Google, which is constantly coming out with new releases of the Chrome browser. Microsoft is also trying to keeping up by showing previews of Internet Explorer 10 less than a month after the release of IE9.
Users can check out Firefox 5 and see a number of new performance and stability enhancements, but the most important is the support for the new CSS animations standards, which is new CSS technology that animates XML elements on web pages. Also included in the new release is what Mozilla calls the “Channel Switcher,” which is a tool that allows users to move between aurora, beta and final release of the browser and test features at each level of development.
The beta release of Firefox 5 can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.