Exactly as in the most optimistic intentions outlined following the release of Firefox 4 stable, the Mozilla Foundation has put the pedal to the metal in the development phases of Firefox 5. We have indeed already reached Beta 2, which is currently available for download.
What immediately stands out is the significant work dedicated to bug fixing: numerous issues were reported, and this Beta 2 has succeeded in isolating and resolving a total of 1290 bugs of various kinds.
Other areas of focus included network and memory performance, as well as more efficient performance for Javascript and canvas operations.
Furthermore, usability has been improved with CSS animations and overall web performance.
There are no major changes reported in terms of aesthetics or specific new functionalities, apart from the user’s ability to switch more easily between development channels: with a single click, you can open “Beta“, “Aurora“, and “Stable“.
As the names already suggest, Aurora and Beta are the “rawer” and more dynamic versions of the browser, with Aurora being particularly so.
To experiment with the various channels, simply click on “Help” in the menu, hover over “About“, and finally click on “Change“: from here you can choose your preferred channel.
Those who wish to start looking at the innovations of the near future, therefore, need only access Aurora, where, it appears, Firefox version 6 will soon be released, obviously in an unstable state, and all the ongoing definition and testing processes.
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