Mozilla has set a release date for the next iteration of its popular open-source browser, shipping the final release builds of Firefox 4 on March 22 should no critical vulnerabilities or bugs in the software arise during their final tests. Last week, the company made the Release Candidate build available, stating that it was likely to be the final test version. Mozilla will be eager to get its browser to market after rival Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9, the newest version of the browser that has been credited with starting what we now know as the “Browser Wars”....

Mozilla’s Firefox 4 software overtook Firefox 3.6 in May to become the most popular Mozilla Internet browser for the first time with a worldwide market share of 14.2%, according to theStatCounter. The previous version of the browser – Firefox 3.6 – is still popular amongst Internet users, however both lag behind Chrome 11 browser and the ever-dominant Internet Explorer 8. Google’s browser currently holds a 16% share of the market, narrowly beating Mozilla’s offerings into second place with Microsoft’s 16 month-old browser accounting for 29....

Mozilla’s Firefox 4 browser has surpassedfive million downloadsin under 24 hours, more than doubling the number of downloads than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 in its first day. Last week, Microsoft announced that it hadregistered 2.35 million downloadsof its newest browser in its first day on the market, an impressive figure considering the browser has been largely reviled over the past decade. Choosing not to issue statements, Mozilla set up a download tracker on its website, allowing Firefox fans to view at-a-glance how well Firefox 4 was performing after it was publicly released for download less than 24 hours ago....

Even before Firefox 4’sarrival, the Mozilla UI team has already been giddy working on Firefox 5, which is due to be released later this year. Here is a quick sneak peek of some of the new features: Site-specific Browser This mockup fromConceivably Techillustrates a very interesting feature that introduces site-specific browsing to Firefox, giving dedicated tabs to specific sites. Web apps are the future and Mozilla attempts to deal with this by turning website tabs into apps, each with its own drop down set of actions....

Fresh from itsacquistion by RIMback in December, The Astonishing Tribe (TaT) has started to detail some of the applications and features they have been involved with for BlackBerry devices. At this years Mobile World Congress, the BlackBerry Blog teamcaught upwith the guys at TaT to look at what its designers had been up to, demonstrating one app from the many they have already created for the BlackBerry Playbook. The app – called Scrapbook – allows users to add media into their virtual scrapbook using four-finger multi-touch control in a visually stunning graphical environment....