The next version of the popular Firefox Web browser has undergone a name change to 1.5 and will be released for beta testing in September. The Mozilla Foundation plans to release the full version by the end of this year.Some analysts credit the growing popularity of the Firefox browser with Microsoft’s move to speed up the deployment of its long-overdue upgrade of Internet Explorer. Industry experts say Firefox has siphoned off about 10 percent of Internet Explorer’s market share.
Various posts on Mozilla’s Web site report that the decision to jump to version 1.5 from the current version of Firefox, now at 1.0.6, resulted from an unrealistic time frame associated with shipping the next update, originally planned for August.
Major Changes Planned
According to Mozilla Europe President Tristan Nitot, the next major version of Firefox will contain more new features than the organization originally estimated. “What we have been doing is better than initially planned, so instead of calling it 1.1, we think it deserves the name of 1.5,” he wrote.
Nitot said the organization has tweaked Firefox’s core programming over the past 16 months. Simply issuing a version update named Firefox 1.1 would be misleading to product users, he explained.
The new features planned for Firefox 1.5 include better overall functionality and an improved extensions system. Firefox uses extensions — free add-on programs contributed by third-parties — to add customized features to the Web browser.
A major new feature in Firefox 1.5 is support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a specification for rendering two-dimensional graphics in browser interfaces. SVG works much like Macromedia’s proprietary Flash technology but is an open standard.
Not Ready for Enterprise
Much of the popularity of Firefox has been because of consumers. Businesses have been slow to adopt the alternative browser because of worries about compatibility issues.
“Firefox is not making a big impact yet in the corporate world,” said Nate L. Root, vice president and research director of customer service for Forrester Research. But Root noted that recent moves by Mozilla developers to form a for-profit corporation will bring Firefox one step closer to being something CIOs can consider.
“Right now it is largely viewed as an experimental product — and rightly so — and is not yet ready for prime time,” said Root.
