Mozilla's next salvos in the browser wars won't come quite as soon as the company previously promised.  Firefox 3.6, which was supposed to ship this month, now isn't scheduled to be finished until sometime during the first quarter of 2010, and the release of Firefox 4.0 has been pushed back, as well.

Given how heated the browser rivalry has become in recent months, the delays represent an interesting choice (and/or failure) on Mozilla's part.  After all, Chrome's continuing to make gains, and Internet Explorer may be about to sacrifice some ground in Europe.  This doesn't look like an ideal time to take things slow.

Still, some interesting things are on the menu in terms of the next versions of Firefox.  Stephen Shankland pointed out this morning, "The big new feature in version 3.6 is incorporation of the Personas plug-in that lets people easily customize the browser's appearance, though behind the scenes there's also been work to speed up the browser's launch time, improve security, and make some other changes."

Version 4.0, which is supposed to arrive in late 2010 or early 2011 (look for a beta this summer), should introduce "significant user interface changes," too.

It'll be interesting to see what Google and Microsoft can accomplish with Chrome and IE by then.

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