Mozilla is announcing that the latest version of its Firefox browser, Firefox 57, is just too good for just another numbered release. The improvements under the hood are so great, they say, and the performance improvements over previous Firefox releases are so grand, that only one name would have been enough to convey this message. That's why the latest Firefox release has been christened "Firefox Quantum".

Mozilla are saying their new Firefox Quantum browser delivers 2x the score in Speedometer as their previous Firefox 56. The new, refined browser didn't appear overnight, though; it's seen numerous improvements under the hood through the application of the Goldilocks principle to browser design, straddling an approach between increased performance and acceptable memory usage. Multi-process and optimized memory footprint are part of the secret sauce, but a new, super-charged CSS engine written in Rust goes a long way. Prioritization of the open tab also helps this increased speed, while (Mozilla says) reducing memory utilization by 30% when compared to Chrome.During the last few moths, the Mozilla team has cleared over 468 performance bottlenecks that where floating under the radar, mining both Firefox's performance and fluidity, in what they say ranged between "small papercuts and big bottlenecks". There's a new, minimalist coat of paint over the Firefox interface, courtesy of their Photon project, which aimed t give Firefox a cleaner, less intrusive look. It also introduces square tabs, smooth animations, and a Library, which provides quick access to your saved stuff: bookmarks, Pocket, history, downloads, tabs, and screenshots.


Mozilla has uploaded a video comparing the two most popular browsers - their own, brand new Firefox Quantum and Chrome in a face-off. Of course, there's likely some preferred web-pages over there.


The new Firefox Quantum will be available for download on November 14th. However, if you're up to being a pioneer, you can download a beta of it today, straight from Mozilla. Naturally, it being a Beta means there are some rough edges - particularly with extension support. Don't take my word for it, but so far I'm impressed by what Mozilla has done with the Firefox Quantum release. Even in beta, the improvements to site loading and responsiveness are obvious, and the new clean look is much more appealing for an uncluttered browsing experience. Just do be aware of the Extension support issue: half of mine are not working.