The only exception will be emergency security updates, which Mozilla calls "chemspills." Those will land simultaneously on all four channels, and result in an emergency update to the beta and release lines.

Ideally, Mozilla's new plan will update the beta channel every week, the nightly and aurora channels every day, and the Firefox build every six weeks.

Key to the new plan is a "silent update" mechanism in Firefox that automatically upgrades the browser to each new version as they're completed. Chrome is the only browser that now updates in the background without notifying the user or requiring any user action.

Mozilla has worked on silent updating on and off for months. Originally slated to , the feature was pulled from that version last fall. It must now make it into Firefox 5 in order for the rapid roll-out of Firefox 6, 7 and beyond to work smoothly.

Since final Firefox releases will not be held for any single feature, it's impossible ahead of time to know what each version will contain. But Mozilla has posted a long of enhancements and additions that range from a near-term identity manager to a long-range goal of bundling Flash with Firefox.