The Mozilla Corporation officially launched its Firefox 4 web browser today, 8 months after it first entered public beta testing. The primary goals for the new browser were improvements in performance, standards support, and the user interface. Some are wondering whether Mozilla Firefox, currently the world’s most popular web browser, has lost its edge. The 8-month beta period was longer than Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) 6-month beta for Internet Explorer 9, which launched last week, and in the 2 years since Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Chrome browser was launched, it has upgraded 10 times. Mozilla has had trouble meeting release dates historically, and Firefox 4 required an astounding 12 beta releases before the company was willing to sign off on the product. The firm has now decided to step back and reevaluate its product plans, with the goal moving forward to complete smaller, less ambitious releases in a timelier manner. Mozilla VP Mike Shaver explained, “The intention here is not to rush features, it’s to let features that are done get to users without waiting for features that aren’t.” Certain features of the new browser had been finished for months, but couldn’t be released separately because they relied on other, uncompleted features. Firefox 4 has an overhauled, faster JavaScript engine, bookmark syncing, a clean new user interface, and it still runs on Windows XP, whereas even Microsoft’s IE 9 does not. From an overall performance standpoint, however, Firefox 4 trails both Chrome and IE 9, and it still separates its address bar and search bar, whereas the other browsers have combined those into 1 integrated bar. The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization that exists to support and provide leadership to the open source Mozilla project. The Mozilla Corporation had revenue of $91.3 million in 2009, the most recent year available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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