Mozilla has a new plan for Firefox in 2011: Turn the crank faster.

The organization is set to deliver Firefox 4 in coming weeks. And according to a draft Firefox roadmap, Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, proposed releasing versions 5, 6, and 7 in 2011, too. This fast-release ethos, pioneered in the browser world by Google's Chrome, means smaller changes arrive more frequently.

For comparison, Firefox 1 arrived in 2004, Firefox 2 in 2006, Firefox 3 in 2008, with Firefox 4 slipping past a hoped-for 2010 ship date and likely to slip past another date set for the end of February.

The faster schedule is designed to make Firefox more competitive by getting new features into users' hands faster. According to Beltzner.

Full story: c|net