Mozilla is stepping up its game to better compete with Google

Mozilla is planning big changes in how it builds its Firefox web browser, including speeding up its release schedule and – in the long term – getting rid of some of the Mozilla-specific technologies that have traditionally been used to build the browser’s UI and add-ons. The decisions were discussed at Moz’s “Coincidental Work Week” meetup in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada during the last week of June and were made public in a pair of forum posts by Mozilla engineering director Dave Camp on Monday. For starters, Mozilla plans to ditch its current 18-week release cycle in favor of something more agile. “We think there are big wins to be had in shortening the time that new features reaches users,” Camp wrote. “Critical fixes should ship to users in minutes, not days. Individual features rolling out to small audiences for focused and multi-variate testing.” As for new features, however, Camp also said the nonprofit has rethought how it plans to add new capabilities to the browser. In future, it will focus on features that set Firefox apart from other browsers, particularly where it comes to giving users control over their web browsing experience, such as managing their privacy.