Mozilla has released an update to Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux, delivering a speedy web browsing experience for users and new tools to assist developers create faster websites and web apps.

According to the company Firefox 7 (13.4 MB download - Windows version) manages memory more efficiently, allowing for a smoother and quicker browsing experience.

Last month Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote stated in a blogpost that Firefox 7 will be a lot speedier and utilise a lot less RAM, due to a new feature called MemShrink. Utilising this feature, Mozilla engineers aim to enhance Firefox’s speed and stability by reducing its memory usage by up to 50% compared to previous iterations of the popular browser.

Web and app developers will be able to employ new tools in Firefox, to make it easier for developers to construct enhanced web apps. These include a new version of hardware-accelerated Canvas, which speeds up HTML5 animations as well as games running within Firefox.

Firefox now also supports the W3C navigation timing spec API, enabling developers to measure factors such as page load time, website traffic and website navigation against bandwidth speed. This API allows developers to test user experiences remotely and easily, so that they’ll be able to quickly optimise their websites, as well as their web apps for different types of users.

In other browser related news Google also recently announced the release of a new stable channel of Chrome, Chrome 14.