The past year was one of the busiest in recent memory for browser developers, with multiple releases and innovations from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Opera.
At the heart of current browser technology race is the emerging HTML5 standard, which updates the decade-old HTML 4 standard that underpins all modern Web browsers. With HTML5, new video, audio and canvas tags enable browser vendors to deliver new dynamic rich media experiences to Web users. Many developers are also leveraging HTML5 as an alternative to Adobe's Flash, as Apple's iOS ban on mobile Flash usage continues.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla delivered only one major browser release during 2010, and it came early in the year. Firefox 3.6 debuted in January, providing new HTML5 support and improved JavaScript performance.
With Firefox 3.6, Mozilla began integrating a plug-in check to ensure that users were up to date with their browser extensions. Firefox 3.6 also changed the browser's tab behavior, so that new tabs now open in the tab adjacent to the one the user is viewing.
The Firefox 3.6 release was supposed to be the beginning of a new era of browser releases for Mozilla. During the year, Mozilla developers talked about a new plan to help accelerate innovation in the browser without the need for major updates. The Lorentz branch of Firefox 3.6 was originally intended as a new agile development branch of Mozilla, though the plan didn't deliver as much as initially had been hoped.
The first Lorentz-branch release of Firefox debuted in June with theFirefox 3.6.4 release. With 3.6.4, Mozilla developers introduced out-of-process plug-ins as an approach to improve the stability and security of the browser.