Mozilla Firefox Announces Major Updates As Its Market Share Sluggishly Recovers

Mozilla Firefox seems to be preparing for a major overhaul as the browser’s market share begins to see minimal improvements after a long slump.

Mozilla recently announced major changes that aim at improving the experience of using Mozilla Firefox according to messages sent via the company’s mailing list.

In the first email message titled “Three Pillars,” the company elaborated on a blog posted on July 2, which first hinted at the planned modifications and updates. The message focused on plans to improve the quality of Mozilla Firefox features, provide “the best of the Web” to users, and focus on unique aspects of Mozilla Firefox.

As for the Mozilla Firefox features, the company said it will enhance every feature it deems to be “functional, and a joy to use,” while eliminating codes they don’t expect to perfect in the near future.

Mozilla also announced that it will continue to work with other organizations to bring “the best of the Web” to Mozilla Firefox users. In its message, the company mentioned its earlier work with Spanish telecommunications and broadband service provider Telefonica in providing users with Firefox Hello, as well as its recent agreement with Pocket to provide a reading list add-on for Mozilla Firefox.

“We intend to spend some significant effort making addons even more awesome by improving security and performance for users,” Dave Camp, Mozilla Firefox’s Director of Engineering, said in the email.

The email also discussed upcoming “feature work” that will focus on the unique aspects that draw users to Mozilla Firefox. According to the email, the company will start focusing on improving online privacy in “an improved Private Browsing mode” it plans to include in upcoming Mozilla Firefox updates.

Dave Camp sent out another email moments later. In the email, Camp said the company plans on slashing the time it takes to release critical updates and bug fixes.

“Critical fixes should ship to users in minutes, not days,” it read, stating that the current “18-week cycle” the company currently follows when releasing major updates is no longer acceptable in today’s internet.

Mozilla made an earlier major announcement regarding upcoming Mozilla Firefox developments on its Future Releases blog.

“We’ll also soon deliver Firefox to new platforms, such as Firefox for iOS and Windows 10,” the company posted.

Mozilla Firefox is sluggishly recovering from an earlier slump in its market share. CNet reported that the browser’s market share rebounded to 12 percent in June, a minor improvement from April’s 11.7 percent and still below the 15.5 percent Mozilla Firefox was enjoying last year. In comparison, competing Google Chrome currently boasts 27.2 percent of Web traffic in June, a jump of more than seven percentage points from last year. Quite surprisingly, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still enjoys major bragging rights as it hogged up over half of the internet traffic last month.

If Mozilla Firefox fails to meet expectations, Microsoft’s upcoming Edge browser may slice out another portion of the Mozilla Firefox market share.

What browser do you use? Do you plan on trying out the revamped Mozilla Firefox for Windows 10 once it’s released?

[Image by Mozilla in Europe]