Mozilla launches Firefox 5 for Windows, Mac and Linux

Mozilla has made Firefox 5 available to download for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms after pushing ahead with a shortened 13-week development cycle.

The most noticeable visual change will be made to the Do-Not-Track feature, first introduced in Firefox 4, which will be moved to a more prominent position to "increase discoverability", Mozilla said.

Most of the improvements to Firefox 5 will be to the back-end, though, with Mozilla touting improved JavaScript, memory and networking performance in the browser.

There will also be additional support for HTML5 as well as CSS animations, which will enable developers to create simple web animations without learning JavaScript.

Firefox 5 also has WebGL-based 3D graphics rendering, the second browser to do so alongside Google Chrome.

Mozilla maintains it will stick to the shorter release cycle popularised by Google, which releases a new version of its Chrome browser every three months.

Despite being subject to numerous delays, Firefox 4 proved immensely popular when it was released in March after 14 months of development.

The browser notched up over 16 million downloads in Europe and a staggering 41 million globally within nine days of launch and broke 100 million downloads after a month.

In January, Firefox overtook Internet Explorer to become the most used browser in Europe, according to statistics from web tracking firm StatCounter.