Mozilla Firefox 5 is officially available for download today

Firefox Logo

Mozilla has officially pushed Firefox 5 out of the door and now is ready for download for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. This new version of Firefox comes just a little over three months of it previous version Firefox 4, which had over 200 million downloads.

Firefox 5 now is part of the new Mozilla model rapid release development cycle, which is based in smaller incremental changes and more often releases; bringing new features, performance enhancements, security updates, and stability improvements in a more rapid pace — pretty similar to what Google Chrome browser is doing –. With version 5 already released Mozilla Firefox team is already working in the next release of Firefox 6.

As we talked before about the early release of Firefox 5 via FTP download, this new version looks exactly like Firefox 4, instead of a redesign from the ground up Mozilla has added better support for web standards, tons of bug fixes and a few modifications in the code. To give you a number, Firefox 5 comes with over 1,000 improvements and performance enchantments that makes much easier for users to interact with the web browser.

Mozilla also made the point that in this new version of Firefox 5 for Android implements the support for Do Not Track privacy feature, making Firefox the first browser supporting this kind of feature in multiple platforms.

Some of the big new features that are included in this release are:

  • Support for CSS animation
  • Improved JavaScript and canvas support
  • Better support for Do No Track feature
  • Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL
  • Improvement on networking performance and memory usage
  • And more…

Mozilla is also offering more options to the users who want to participate in the beta and testing process. Now in addition to the nightly and beta releases, users interested can opt for the new Aurora channel, where users can access to more features in the browser before they go to beta. Also this is pretty similar to what Google Chrome is doing with the developer channel.

Mozilla Firefox 5 - Screenshot

Firefox is showing that is in the game for browsing more than ever; this new web browser is faster, a lot more than Firefox 4, pages load faster, even the start-up time of the browser is faster. With the new shorter cycle release is going to be great to see new features and improvements more often.

If you didn’t yet upgrade to Firefox 5, just open the web browser, click the big orange button, click Check for updates in the About Firefox menu. Or just go to the download page.

Let us know your thoughts in the new Firefox release in the comments below.

Source The Mozilla Blog

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.