Surprising customers this year, Mozilla embraced a quick turnaround cycle for its Firefox browser. Some worried that the shorter dev time would lead to botched launches and lackluster new features. Others, however, welcomed the new schedule and grew accustomed to more regular browser tweaks.
The software company has put together a colorful year in review infographic to share some of Firefox's 2011 highlights.
Hot off the heels of Firefox 9's release and the new Firefox for Android earlier this week, Mozilla claimed the browser has received 135 APIs, 83 features and over 10,000 enhancements this year alone. Firefox users synced over 25 billion items and downloaded nearly half a billion add-ons, the company added.
Privacy-loving individuals, however, were surprisingly underrepresented. Only 17.6 percent of mobile and 6 percent of desktop Firefox users clicked "Do Not Track," a feature introduced in February's Firefox 4 beta and included in the official release weeks later.
The anti-behavioral tracking software has also been implemented in new versions of Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with Google's Chrome the lone hold-out. Instead, Chrome offers a free cookie-blocking extension called "Keep My Opt-Outs" through its Web Store.
On the performance end, the company said the new Firefox is seven times faster than last January's 3.6 version and runs 32 times as fast as the project's progenitor, Firefox 1, which launched in 2004.
Mozilla updated its release schedule in April to keep pace with rival Chrome. The company published the Firefox 10 Beta this week, with the full release scheduled for January 31. (via The Mozilla Blog)
