Firefox 3 is not even out the door, but work has started on the next refactoring of the Mozilla platform. Dubbed Mozilla 2 (FF3 is built on Mozilla 1.9), it is a chance to make lots of interesting, even scary, changes to the platform. For some background on Mozilla 2 go back and read Brendan’s post. Also, read the Mozilla 2 wiki pages.

Actually, lots of work has already been completed and lots more work is underway. Checkout the notes from the status meetings. You can call in every Wednesday to hear what’s happening. The work on ActionMonkey and XPCOMGC is pretty exciting stuff (for geeks, I know).

Another of the more exciting goals of Mozilla 2 is the move to use more JavaScript and less C++. Yes, C++ is great for those times you really need it (performance & native APIs), but JavaScript can handle many things better, easier and without a compiler. Mozilla 2 is adding a lot of improvements to JavaScript as well, making it faster too.

Less C++ is really part of the “Less Binary Code” theme of Mozilla 2. Another part of that theme is reducing our XPCOM footprint. Benjamin Smedberg recently posted some information about goals for XPCOM in Mozilla 2 to the Wiki and Newsgroup. See Benjamin’s older post on XPCOM changes too. I encourage any extension, embedders and XUL application developers who use binary code to go and read the information.