Mozilla wants to get to Firefox 7 during 2011

Not long ago Guillermo Julian told us skeptical about watching the announcement of the departure of the final version of Firefox 4 this month, February. Now, according to a roadmap on which have focused the spotlight on many blogs, it seems that the intention of Mozilla for this year is not only finish but to get version 4 to version 7.

Thus, a priori, it sounds a little crazy. But, leaving aside for now this is only a draft, what is clear is that Mozilla plans to tighten the throttle over 2011.

One of the successes of Firefox, as mentioned in the document, was to revive the market for browsers. With this roadmap, the aim is "to make sure we can deliver a product that appeals to users to continue to be able to demonstrate our vision of the Web." Put another way: do not want to lose ground to competitors such as Chrome and possibly the next Internet Explorer 9.

However, this is not the only reason (valid by itself) to argue:


It is important to remember, however, to gain browser market share is not the only goal of the Mozilla mission. Our mission is to promote an open web platform, which is the more attractive environment for modern applications. This vision is being increasingly threatened by development models of applications that overlook the Web for direct connection based on closed, proprietary models (...).

Is not the first time you mention this threat and the perception of it is something that is hovering in the air, as we saw in the paper that Tim Berners-Lee said Jaime few months ago and which referred to such models development. In Mozilla, this also represents a boost to step up a gear.

As I said before, the document is only a draft. Not specified dates, or even specific features of each version more than a few by way of proposals are not final. For example, in Firefox 5 would implement the accounts manager, a simpler interface appear to share content and 64-bit Windows. Firefox6 would have support for web applications, optimized for JavaScript and support for OS X 10.7. As for Firefox 7, just there are some sketches that indicate that perhaps then the browser would have a separation process in the style of Chrome.

This is, for now, just a statement of intent. Of course, that can achieve the goal of a market which at least Firefox 7 later this year (and I'm speculating, of course) is laudable but, in the light of the delay that is taking the version 4, it is normal look at it with skepticism.

However, I think Mozilla deserves a vote of confidence. For example, Mozilla Labs experiments are an indication that progress is being made simultaneously in new things, some of which, once polished, see implemented in future versions of the browser. And although it is costing you, personally I am very happy with this version 4, I've been using as a nightly build almost since it debuted.

What do you think? Regardless of whether or not to comply, do you believe that this roadmap will help Firefox to upload your fee?