Firefox 1.1 Scrapped, 1.5 Due in Sept

The Mozilla Foundation will scrap Firefox 1.1, and instead focus on version 1.5 of the popular alternative browser, lead Firefox engineer Ben Goodger said earlier this week. The change reflects the amount of bug fixes and new features that will be included in the release.

"We've made some major improvements to the Firefox application, especially in the update and extension systems that warrant more than a minor version bump," Mozilla's Asa Dotzler said.

"Calling it 1.1 would suggest to most users that this was a minor update when in fact it is quite major and all 1.0 users really should move forward for a much improved product."

Goodger reiterated Dotzler's comments. "Nothing is scrapped, this is just a version number realignment. Given the feature content of what we were going to call 1.1 -- more than 12 months of new Gecko features including SVG, Canvas, etc., many application functional enhancements, this felt more like a 1.5 to everyone than a 1.1."

The updated roadmap now calls for a beta release in August followed by the full release in September of this year. Goodger wrote in the updated roadmap that version 2.0 of the software is due in the first quarter of 2006, with version 3 due by the end of 2006.

New features expected in this release are an automated update system, support for SVG graphics, and support for the creation of a custom client to use with web services.