Mozilla adds new Aurora development stage to update Firefox faster
Mozilla is speeding up releases of its popular Firefox Web browser and already offering testers a taste of Firefox 5.
The Aurora version of Firefox 5, which is available for download now, comes just a month after the final version of Firefox 4 was released. Aurora is the newest of three stages of development that new versions of Firefox will go through before release.
Mozilla has made Aurora publicly available but warns on its website that it offers "the newest innovations in an unstable environment that's not for the faint of heart."
The addition of the Aurora version will increase the rate at which Firefox gets new features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users, Damon Sicore, Mozilla's senior director of platform engineering, said in a blog post.
It also gives users and open-source developers "more opportunities to participate in building Firefox," Sicore said.
The first Aurora release includes performance, security and stability improvements that need to be tested out, he said.
The move should also speed up Firefox's development, with versions of the browser moving from Aurora to Beta and from Beta to Final about every 6 weeks. It also mirrors the release patterns of Google's Chrome browser, which is updated with new builds about every 6 to 8 weeks.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Image: Firefox's logos for different versions of the popular Web browser -- Nightly, Aurora and Beta. Credit: Mozilla
