Mozilla is moving closer to a general release of the next version of Firefox -- currently listed as v3.5. Most industry observers believe that the general release is still a couple of months away. The organization released a 3rd beta last week ... on March 12, 2009 ... requesting feedback on a number of fairly technical features. For example, the Mozilla Blog includes the following as a feature for the testing community to review:
Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.Really ... don't worry if you don't know what that means.
The real news is that Mozilla is fully engaged in the browser war that's currently underway. Microsoft is on the verge of releasing the new Internet Explorer 8, Apple has offered Safari 4 in beta ... and of course no one can forget Google's offering in the browser market: Chrome.
For those of us in the technology world, it means that application architecture & testing plans must account for all of these potential delivery platforms. This will increase the importance of abstracting the application layer (logic) from the presentation layer (user interface).
Furthermore, business leaders will need to budget for the added development time & expense associated with being compatible with four browsers. This is especially important for customer-facing applications, for which the choice of browser is somewhat unpredictable and completely uncontrollable.
The Mozilla Blog: Firefox beta now available
The Webware blog @ CNET: Mozilla says next Firefox likely months away
No comments:
Post a Comment