Windows Phone 8 is on the up these days accompanied by fantastic devices like the Lumia 920, but it seems to be the emerging Firefox OS that is gathering interest as a newcomer to the scene. Although extremely early builds of the operating system have been released for those daring enough to try it out, not many people have witnessed it in the flesh, that is until it appeared on a mysterious smartphone during a CES event.
The Mozilla team has been busily updating and improving its revered Firefox browser, with more frequent release cycles in place to ensure it maintains competitive with the likes of Google's Chrome. As planned, the foundation has released version 1.0 of the Firefox OS Simulator, and by means of a blog post, Mozilla has also introduced per-window private browsing via the Firefox Nightly channel.
Mozilla's popular Firefox brings a new release almost every month, and following the October release of Firefox 16 and the subsequent Firefox 17 beta, the latest version has crept out of beta stage and is ready to rock. Available on the official download page, those keen to get the update as soon as possible can grab it right now via 17 Mozilla’s FTP servers - download details at the bottom of the page.
It may not be the most feature-packed update that has ever been released, but Mozilla has kept in line with their relatively recent tradition of pushing out prompt updates to their software by making the final build of Firefox 16 web browser available for download. Once upon a time, we found ourselves having to wait an extremely long time before any new browser update was pushed out, especially major revisions like this, but the new rapid revision approach is definitely beneficial to those who user the software.
If you can't seem to decide between iOS, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, then worry not, when 2013 comes around there will be another new kid on the block in the form of Mozilla's Firefox OS. Although the company has been seeding early builds of the operating system to developers since summer and actually introduced it to the world during Mobile World Congress, there is little that we actually know about it.
Firefox's well-documented six week release cycle means as soon as one version arrives, the beta of the next edition is no more than a couple of days away. True to that motif, just two days after Firefox 14 was released for Windows, Mac and Linux, Firefox 15 beta has arrived, which, among other things, takes care of a few nagging memory leaks.
Mozilla's Firefox has been around for quite a while now, and despite Google continually pushing updates of its fast-growing Chrome browser, Firefox has continued to remain resilient, altering its own release schedule in a bid to stay relevant. Hence, here we are at Firefox 14, and just six weeks after Firefox 13 was seeded on Mozilla's servers, and the fourteenth iteration still manages to offer a bunch of useful changes.
If you are like me and make use of a number of different web browsers, then it can become a little confusing to keep up with release schedules and what has actually been included when a company like Mozilla or Google pushes out a new update. For those who use Firefox regularly, you will probably be aware that for one reason or another Mozilla have changed the way they release updates, and whether or not that is to keep in line with competitors is open for discussion.
It wasn't that long ago when users had to wait an eternity for the developers over at Mozilla and Google to push out new versions of the popular Firefox and Chrome web browsers. In fact, pretty much every major browser version seemed to have an extremely long shelf life before the developers felt it needed an update and brought new and improved features to the public. Thankfully, it looks as though that trend of making users wait for improvements has been put to bed, with Mozilla pumping out the updates thick and fast for its Firefox browser.
Browsers, browsers everywhere, but which browser is your personal preference for all of your world wide web navigational needs? We tend to find that different browsers have different strong advantages and disadvantages over one another, but as with a lot of things in life; one of the key characteristics of a good browser is pure unadulterated speed.
