The Android beta of the browser also gains Twitter search. In addition, it gives users the ability to create a master password to protect usernames and passwords stored in the program, along with the ability to create site bookmarks by dragging and dropping URLs from the address bar to the Android home screen.

Some major changes may be in store for the Android version of Firefox, however. Long criticized for the mobile browser's slow launch time, the team working on that flavor of Firefox is mulling over "going native" and ditching Mozilla's XUL user interface language as the basis for Android Firefox. Experiments with the browser using have been promising.

With its new accelerated schedule, Mozilla produces a new whole new version of Firefox within 18 weeks. For six weeks, a version is in the raw "Aurora" stage. At the end of those six weeks, it becomes a beta. And after another six weeks, it turns into the next version number.

That accelerated schedule can have an impact on quality control. For example, just hours after Mozilla released Firefox 7 this week, it had to roll out version 7.0.1 quickly to address an add-ons problem that occurred when users upgraded from version 6--Firefox 7, apparently, was . While it seemed to many users that the add-ons and their data had disappeared during the upgrade, both were in fact still intact, Mozilla explained.

The stepped-up production schedule for Firefox doesn't seem to have helped its browser rankings, either. In fact, the rate of growth of Google's Chrome browser, coupled with declines in Firefox users, has prompted some analysts to predict that in the browser rankings by the end of the year.