Firefox 1.1 scrapped

Mozilla have updated their roadmap for Firefox development, revealing that the next major release will not be 1.1 as previously announced, but will be called 1.5. This reflects the sheer volume of new features and bug fixes being crammed into the next version.

Codenamed "Deer Park", the next instalment is still on track for a Summer release, entering Alpha 2 on July 12 and due to be beta tested in August.

This codebase is actually different from what many of you use today, which moved to version 1.0.6 earlier this week. "Deer Park" will sport a new version of the Layout Engine, also known as Gecko. In short, the Layout Engine, like the 3D engine of a game, takes various building blocks like HTML, XML, and images, and combines them with formatting information (such as Cascading Style Sheets) and "paints" the browser's content area. You can read more about it here.

Looking to the future, following Firefox 1.5 (and the inevitable minor bug-fix releases), Mozilla Firefox 2, and version 2.0 is to be known, is currently planned for Q1 2006. Version 3, also known as The Next Next Big Thing™, is slated for Q3 2006. Some of the goals for these versions include:

• making improvements to Bookmarks/History
  
• allow options on a Per-Site basis
  
• additional enhancements to the Extensions system, Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search and other areas

There must be some worried people at Microsoft. Firstly, there comes the news that the delayed IE7 will not work for all the thousands of Windows 2000 users, who are mainly corporate. Internet Explorer's market share has already been in decline since the debut of Firefox 1.0, and it shows no sign of levelling out.

There is then rumours that IE7 will not support the CSS2 standard. Unfortunately, this threatens to continue the nightmare for web developers, with different browsers supporting a mixed salad of standards with varying degrees of success.

Are you part of the Red Fox's band, or do you side with Bill & his Merry Men? Could you not care less what you use to browse the net, as long as it works? Discuss this story in our Forums.