Dubbed IonMonkey, the new compiler is designed to enable "many new JavaScript optimizations," according to the project's .

"In particular IonMonkey will feature much more organized and explicit data structures typical of advanced compilers," the project team explains. "This goal of being clean and flexible will be extremely important for future optimization work and experimentation."

The Tor Browser Bundle

What kinds of improvements IonMonkey brings about remain to be seen. In the meantime, however, plans are afoot to create a fork of Firefox called the Tor Browser, bringing yet another player into the already competitive browser arena.

For those who aren't already familiar with it, Tor (short for "The Onion Router") is a global network of servers that offers anonymous Web surfing by randomly routing traffic through multiple servers, thereby masking a user's true IP address. Currently, those who want to use Tor for anonymous surfing must install the extension in their Firefox browser as well as additional Tor software.