Firefox 10 now available for download

It's been nine months since Mozilla announced that Firefox would be moving to a rapid release cycle, and since then the browser has moved from version 4 to 10. According to the beta changelog, the latest release brings the kind of life-changing features you'd expect from a six-week update cycle, with some extension management improvements, a forward button that hides itself until it has a function, the inclusion of APIs for full-screen web apps, and anti-aliasing for WebGL. Firefox 10 also marks the debut of the "Extended Support Release," intended for enterprises that don't want to deal with the hassle of supporting a new browser every six weeks. ESR releases receive no updates apart from necessary security fixes, and will change versions once every seven releases, making the next release due around November.
If you find Firefox's frantic product cycle a bit over the top, it's worth noting that Google, Mozilla's closest competitor, is also on a six-week cycle, and recently went a full 19 days between releasing Chrome 17 beta and 18 dev earlier this month. Both browsers are rapidly developing and have relatively similar marketshare figures, but the momentum has been in Chrome's favor. Statisticians earlier this month announced Chrome was now the world's second most popular browser, knocking Firefox from a spot it had held for many years. It remains to be seen if small iterative updates are the way back into the game for Mozilla, but this update does bring Firefox a little step closer to its rivals' feature sets. Firefox 10 comes as a silent update for those of you that already have Firefox, or is available for direct download at the PC and Mac source links below.