In a move to compete with Google which makes updated browsers every six to eight weeks Mozilla announced that it is planning to release four new versions of Firefox this year shortening thus the browser’s cycle. Up to present days Mozilla has released updated versions every 12 to 18 months.

The draft of Mozilla’s Firefox roadmap for 2011 shows that one of the non-profit entity’s priorities is to "ship our new technology to users in smaller bundles, more frequently."

Writing to developers last month Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich said that Firefox 5 would likely arrive four months after Firefox 4. And he confirms that Mozilla is moving to quarterly release cycles.

Furthermore, Mozilla's roadmap draft shows that Firefox 5 will feature a new account manager, a UI for "simple sharing", UI animation, and support for 64-bit Windows. Firefox 6 will include a faster cache, support for Mac OS X 10.7, JavaScript optimizations, and a move towards open "web applications".

Google is now offering a Chrome Web Store, where users can browse and "install" web apps on their Chrome browsers, but Mozilla has proposed an "open" framework for online stores that would offer web applications for any browser.

According to the roadmap, Mozilla is looking to design and implement its web application framework and implement "missing pieces of CSS/HTML required for compelling web applications."