Mozilla Releases Firefox 5, Fulfills Vow Of Faster Upgrades

just three months after debuting Firefox 4

While not considered a major upgrade of the open-source browser, Firefox 5 offers some 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements, including support for the Do Not Track privacy feature across multiple platforms (the first browser to do so, according to Mozilla).

Firefox is under increased competitive pressure from Google's Chrome browser, which in the past year has more than doubled its market share to nearly 20 percent, and Microsoft's recently debuted Internet Explorer 9. Firefox's share of worldwide browser usage has declined from nearly 32 percent in May 2010 to just more than 29 percent last month, according to StatCounter.

Mozilla is hoping that a more rapid release development cycle will make the browser more competitive by more quickly delivering new features, security updates and stability improvements. Mozilla is reportedly targeting Firefox 6 for release as early as August.

Firefox 5 provides a number of new features that will make it easier for developers to build Web applications and Web sites that support the browser and create add-ons for the software using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux now supports CSS animations.

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