Mozilla seems to be determined to release new versions of the Firefox web browser at a rapid pace. This week the MozillaWiki web site announced that Firefox 6 will enter into beta phase on Tuesday, July 5. The beta release comes just a few weeks after Mozilla officially released the final version of Firefox 5 under its new rapid development program. Not only is Firefox 6 going into beta on July 5 but the next version of the software, Firefox 7 will be made available in the Aurora testing section on the same day. The Aurora channel is basically one meant mostly for developers with the software not as stable as that of a beta release.
Mozilla has also been releasing other software in the same manner. Earlier this week it officially released the fifth version of its Thunderbird email software program. The official Thunderbird blog site goes over some of the changes and improvements made for the fifth version. For example features such as RSS feeds, attachment management, and tabs can now be dragged and rearranged in a new window. There's also a new add-on manager that lets users add, delete and manager the various add-ons made to work with Thunderbird.
As we mentioned a few days ago, Mozilla has chosen not to offer automatic updates for Firefox which means users must make the choice to update the browser to the current fifth version. Those updates are needed in order for users to keep the software safe from exploits, additionally Mozilla also announced that Firefox 4 has reached EOL (End of life) with Firefox 5 being the sole security update for the 3 month old browser.
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