Mozilla has changed its strategy of how a new browser is developed and released. The company is adapting a model that is reminiscent of Google’s approach with Chrome and if Mozilla can keep the idea of the schedule in the proposed draft, then we will see the release of Firefox 5 in the final week of June.
Don’t get me wrong, there is no final release date set by Mozilla for Firefox 5 yet, but the recently published Mozilla browser release model fits exactly Mozilla’s recently made statement that Firefox 5 will be launched within the first half of this year.
Firefox proposed life cycle
According to Mozilla’s Rob Sayre, one complete release cycle of Firefox will take 16 weeks (which is substantially longer than Google’s 6 week cycle for Chrome). We know that initial work on Firefox 5 began earlier this week (certain work has been done over the past weeks, such as UI proposals.) If Mozilla can put this plan in place and release Firefox 16 weeks from now, then we are looking at June 29 as the release time frame.
According to Sayre, Firefox (Dev) would move from Mozilla Central to an experimental stage after 6 weeks in the cycle. The beta phase begins after 11 weeks and transitions into the final phase at 16 weeks. The development of the browser describes a modified agile development method with constant development phases as well as code improvement iterations in the initial experimental, beta and final stages of the browser.
Once the schedule is established, users will have the choice between three different browser versions at any given time: Just like Google, Mozilla will also offer developer, beta and final versions of a browser – all of which will have different version numbers: Google, for example, recently published the final version 10 of Chrome, while its developer builds are at 11 and the nightly builds at 12.
Mozilla has already published first Firefox 5 builds, which, however, still carry the version number 4.0 b13-pre and use the current Firefox 4.0 interface.
This model is just a draft, but the level of detail as well as Mozilla’s motivation to shorten the lifecycle of each browser version in an effort to add improvements to Firefox on an accelerated pace, suggests that Mozilla will move from a targeted two main releases of Firefox per year to three. Mozilla broke its old model with Firefox 4, which has been – if we include Firefox 3.7 alpha – in development for more than one year.
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