Mozilla: Superfast Firefox Quantum Is Most Significant Update Since 1.0

Mozilla says Firefox Quantum (also known as Firefox 57) is the most significant release of the open source browser since Firefox 1.0 launched in 2004.

The non-profit organisation says development focused around sped, with a brand new core processor powering the software, alongside a new Stylo CSS engine and ‘Photon’ user interface.

The core engine uses less memory, and therefore less power, allowing for multiple tabs while the CSS engine runs in parallel across multiple processor cores available on PC and mobile devices.

Firefox Quantum

As for the Photon UI, this will be rolled out to Firefox browsers on iOS and Android too. In fact, any product with the Firefox name will adopt it.

“Firefox Quantum is over twice as fast as Firefox from 6 months ago, built on a completely overhauled core engine with brand new technology stolen from our advanced research group, and graced with a beautiful new look designed to get out of the way and let you do what you do best: surf a ton of pages, open a zillion tabs, all guilt free because Firefox Quantum uses less memory than the competition,” boasts Mozilla senior vice president Mark Mayo.

The Quantum Project was first announced more than a year ago and a beta was released in September. More than 700 authors have contributed code during the testing phase.

Mozilla will hope the focus on speed will allow it to seize market share from Google and Microsoft. Firefox currently controls 13.14 percent of the browser market, behind Chrome’s  59.84 and Internet Explorer’s 15.09 percent.

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