Mozilla pushes out final Firefox 5 test build

Mozilla plans to release the next small-fry iteration of its Firefox browser next week.

Ahead of that, a release candidate version of Firefox 5 landed yesterday. The open-source browser-maker lists the following tweaks to the latest test build:

• Added support for CSS animations;
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability;
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance;
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL and canvas;
• Improved spell-checking for some locales;
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users;
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures;
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance; and
• The Firefox development channel switcher introduced in previous Firefox Beta updates has been removed.

Firefox 4 was released just three months ago, and versions 6 and 7 of the popular browser are expected before the year is out.

Mozilla recently rejigged its release schedule, in part to reflect Google's Chrome development cycle.

Big browser releases are now a thing of the past at Mozilla Towers. The org now prefers to iterate often with smaller changes between each new version.


Published in The Register