There is no doubt that by the end of the year, Mozilla Group will release at least two more major versions of their popular and extendable browser. But is it enough to release consecutive versions instead of small patches that build the product continuously? Rumors say that in the end Mozilla will give up the concept of versions and will rely on a notify system that will tell the user if he runs the latest version or not.
Until then, Mozilla has released the sixth “major” version of Firefox. Unlike the fourth version which was by all means a true major update, Firefox 6 suffers from the same lack of new features and improvements like Firefox 5. Besides its number, the sixth version hasn’t been changed at all. This latest version does nothing else but to fix some security issues and to change some minor undercover features. Here is the list of changes:
- The address bar now highlights the domain of the website you’re visiting
- Streamlined the look of the site identity block
- Added support for the latest draft version of WebSockets with a prefixed API
- Added support for EventSource / server-sent events
- Added support for window.matchMedia
- Added Scratchpad, an interactive JavaScript prototyping environment
- Added a new Web Developer menu item and moved development-related items into it
- Improved usability of the Web Console
- Improved the discoverability of Firefox Sync
- Reduced browser startup time when using Panorama
- Fixed several stability issues
- Fixed several security issues