Mozilla hopes to release Firefox 4 in October or November, a new version that has speed among its top goals.
"Performance is a huge, huge, huge thing for us," said Mike Beltzner, vice president of engineering for Firefox, in a Webcast on Tuesday about plans for the browser. "We created the performance story, and we've got to keep at it."
Among other features planned for Firefox 4--and Mozilla emphatically cautions that plans can change--are support for high-speed graphics and text through Direct2D on Windows; a tidier user interface with more prominent and powerful tabs; support for several newer Web technologies; 64-bit versions; and compatibility with multitouch interfaces.