Mozilla and Firefox 5

Mozilla released Firefox 5 earlier this week, just three months after rolling out Firefox 4 and a month after it released version 5 in beta.

Version 5 has "more than 1,000 improvements," which include the "Do Not Track" privacy feature and support for the CSS Animations standard, among other things.

In its rush to make the Web better, however, Mozilla is taking criticism for not making it especially clear to users that it would stop issuing vulnerability patches for Firefox 4.

That has given rise to concerns that users who delay updating for various reasons may not realize they'll lack protection against the latest malware.

"Firefox 5 is the security update for Firefox 4, and we do not plan to release a Firefox 4.0.2," Johnathan Nightingale, the Mozilla Foundation's director of Firefox engineering, told TechNewsWorld.

Should Mozilla have more forcefully notified Firefox 4 users that they have to upgrade to version 5? Should it include automatic updates instead of just sending users a pop-up window reminding them to update their browsers?