Mozilla's 2012 Firefox Roadmap Targets Many New Goals

by Sam Dean - Feb. 14, 2012Comments (0)

Mozilla has released its 2012 roadmap for the Firefox browser, and to say that it is ambitious would be an understatement. Of course, Firefox was moved to a rapid release cycle in February of last year, and the company has been delivering updates to the browser at such a fast pace that it has even faced some backlash from users and IT administrators. There is a huge laundry list of updates to come for the browser this year, with a strong emphasis on adding social features and privacy enhancements along with preservation of open web standards.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Firefox roadmap has to do with how Mozilla is mapping updates to the browser to changes on the web. The roadmap says:

"The Web is more than just the desktop browser and so in 2012 Mozilla will be broadening its product offerings to include a web-wide people-centric identity system, a complete web apps ecosystem, and a no-compromises mobile browser. Integrating these products into the Firefox experience will give users a much richer Firefox and will help launch these new products to a broad user and developer audience."

Among interesting features to come, Firefox is going to include a seamless process for migration from Google's Chrome browser, including preservation of preferences, bookmarks and more. That's a wise move, as Chrome has been growing its market share faster than Firefox has, and, in fact, Statcounter's recent data shows that Chrome's share has surpassed Firefox's.

Mozilla also remains very focused on web standards, including HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, where performance updates are going to be critical.

If you're a Firefox user, take a peek at what's to come this year.