Aurora: Firefox Gets a Dev Channel

After the release of the long-delayed Firefox 4, Mozilla announced that it would switch to a faster release schedule with multiple channels that was more like Google’s Chrome. As part of this effort, Mozilla today announced Aurora, a new early release channel for Firefox that is basically equivalent to Chrome’s dev channel. Aurora will see updates long before they arrive in the final versions of Firefox.

Mozilla will still keep its nightly test builds around, too, though it is not highlighting them on its new site for the different Firefox channels.

The Aurora channel will, according to Mozilla, allow users to “experience the newest innovations in an unstable environment.” The quality of these builds will be a step up from the organization’s nightly builds, but Mozilla also warns that “Aurora releases may not be as stable as beta or final releases.”

The current version of Aurora (Firefox 5 alpha 2) doesn’t yet feature any major updates, but this will likely change in the future. For now, if you are interested in running the latest and greatest from Mozilla, head over here and install Aurora.

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