Firefox 3.5 is not yet out the door, but Mozilla has already started the planning for Firefox 3.6, codenamed ‘Namoroka’. The new browser is named after a national park in Madagascar.
So far, Mozilla has outlined a number of key goals for Firefox 3.6 with the top item being performance.
“Observable improvements in user-perceptible performance metrics such as
startup, time to open a new tab, and responsiveness when interacting
with the user interface. Common user tasks should feel faster and more
responsive.”
Digging a little deeper, Mozilla is setting the goal of having, “dramatic, human-perceivable (>50ms) speed increases on startup.”
Memory bloat and performance, not just JavaScript – are the most pressing issues that Mozilla clearly needs to solve and I’m thrilled that it’s at the top of their list.
Slow startup times are no longer acceptable.
The new Linux distros from Fedora and Ubuntu are both pushing for sub 20 second startups and it only makes sense that the leading open source browser follows the lead to lower startup time too.
Firefox 3.6 should also see the integration of the Ubiquity command infrastructure (now called Taskfox), that will add a major new dimension to the web browsing experience.
The target release date for Firefox 3.6 is early to mid 2010.
