【Michael Maien】

After almost a year of development,Michael Maien Mozilla has launched what it claims is the fastest Firefox ever.

The new browser, called Firefox Quantum, will be released and automatically update on Nov. 14, but it's available today in beta and developer editions. You can get the desktop, Android, and iOS versions from Mozilla's website.

Mozilla claims its new browser is twice as fast as Firefox was a year ago, and is often (though not always) noticeably faster than Google Chrome.

Over the past several months, Mozilla has fixed 468 bugs that were slowing down the browser.

Quantum also prioritizes the loading of your active tabs.

"We’ve also improved Firefox so that the tab you’re actively using downloads and runs before other tabs you have open in the background," the company said in a blog post, noting that the process "results in Firefox Quantum often being faster than Chrome, while consuming roughly 30% less RAM."

The new browser boasts an interface redesign featuring square tabs, menus that change size based on whether you're clicking with a mouse or a finger, extensions (like Chrome's), and your browsing history, downloads, bookmarks, and screenshots consolidated in a "Library."

Firefox Quantum is powered by a new proprietary CSS engine, Quantum CSS, which claims to incorporate a feature called "style sharing cache," inspired by Chrome and Safari, to further speed up the browser and reduce the RAM it demands.

This release marks a promising surge forward for Mozilla, which has largely been quiet since it killed Firefox OS in February.

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