Beyond Firefox 3.5: Sneak Peek at Mozilla's Next Browser

Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 is off to a running start. The new browser, boasting significant speed increases and a host of added features, was officially released Tuesday morning. By mid-afternoon, the program had surpassed 1.6 million downloads worldwide and was steadily climbing, according to Mozilla's real-time tracking utility.

While most of the tech world is busy getting to know Firefox 3.5, though, Mozilla's engineers are already deep into their next big project: the tentatively numbered Firefox 3.6, codename Namoroka.
The Next Firefox: Meet Namoroka

The next Firefox is currently slated to be released in early- to mid-2010, according to Mozilla's developer notes. That, as we saw with Firefox 3.5 (formerly 3.1), can always change as things moves forward; in fact, Mozilla's already given Namoroka the additional nickname of "Firefox.next" to avoid getting attached to any specific figures.
So what's in store for this mysteriously named new browser? Here are some highlights of what's in the works so far.

• Performance

The follow-up to Firefox 3.5 will aim to improve performance even more from the current configuration. Mozilla developers intend to make "dramatic" and "user-perceptible" gains in areas such as startup time, new tab opening time, and overall responsiveness.

• Customization

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