Mozilla Firefox 5 slated for June release

Barely have users gotten used to the latest version of Mozilla's Firefox browser when the next major version may be coming in June. A draft of Firefox's development schedule showed Mozilla has set a more aggressive timetable that may see Firefox 5 coming out by June 21. "In general, each stage of the process (and activity pertaining to a particular version) lasts for six weeks," it said. The aggressive timetable appeared to take a page from Google in developing its Chrome browser. Chrome, which started in 2008, is now at Version 10. Mozilla defined four stages in the development of a new Firefox version: Mozilla Central; Aurora; Beta; and Release. But it said that in the case of Firefox 5, there will be a "slightly different" schedule: three weeks at Mozilla Central; and five weeks each at Aurora and Beta. "Rather than 6 weeks for mozilla-central, mozilla-aurora, and mozilla-beta we instead have 3 weeks for development on mozilla-central, 5 weeks to converge and stabilize on mozilla-aurora, and 5 weeks to validate on mozilla-beta," it said. Work on Firefox 5 started March 22, when Firefox 4 was released. The aurora stage is due to start April 12; the beta stage on May 17; and the release on June 21. There will be four update channels: nightly, aurora, beta, and release. The nightly is for "Mozilla developers and power users willing to risk massive instability to see and test the latest fixes." A nightly update rate will cater to some 50,000 current users. Mozilla anticipates 100,000 users for the nightly audience. Aurora is for power users willing to risk instability to test the latest fixes. While there are no users now, Mozilla expects to have one million "aurora" users. The beta channel updates weekly for some 2.78 million current users. Mozilla expects to have 10 million users for this channel. On the other hand, the release channel is the stable version that is made available to users. Mozilla anticipates an update rate of "6-12 weeks." Firefox 6 Mozilla said Firefox 6 will start the normal schedule where every step in the cycle takes six weeks. It said Firefox 6's development cycle starts when Firefox 5 is cloned from mozilla-central to mozilla-aurora on April 12. Silent updating A story on PC World said Mozilla has been working on silent updating "on and off" for months. Silent updating automatically updates the browser to each new version. Google's Chrome is so far the only browser that does background updating, with no need for user intervention. — TJD, GMA News