This accelerated release cycle was met with criticism by users, as it often broke add-on compatibility, as well as those who believe Firefox was simply trying to increase its version number to compare with other browsers such as Google Chrome. The stated aim of this faster-paced process is to get new features to users faster. Gecko version numbering is the same as the Firefox build version number, starting with 5.0 on Firefox 5. 'Release' is the current official version of Firefox. The 'Beta' channel provides improved stability over the 'Nightly' builds and is the first development milestone that has the 'Firefox' logo. The 'Beta' channel is up to six weeks behind the 'Aurora' build, for up to about twelve weeks compared to the most recent 'Nightly' build. As of version 35, the 'Aurora' channel has been renamed to the 'Developer Edition' channel.

The 'Aurora' build is up to six weeks behind 'Nightly' and offers functionality that has undergone basic testing. The most recent available build is called 'Nightly Builds' and offers the latest, untested features and updates. In April 2011, the development process was split into several 'channels', each working on a build in a different stage of development.

Main article: Firefox early version history Rapid releases This was gradually accelerated further in late 2019, so that new major releases occur on four-week cycles starting in 2020. Starting with version 5.0, a rapid release cycle was put into effect, resulting in a new major version release every six weeks. Firefox was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla browser, first released as Firefox 1.0 on November 9, 2004.

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