Mozilla has already put the beta for the next release, Firefox 15, out for downloading. The biggest draw to participate in an early beta would be to test out the improvements in preventing memory leaks, which FF15 addresses nicely along with a few more timely improvements.

There are several new features coming in Firefox 15, but none is likely to have as big of an impact on your day-to-day browsing as the memory improvements. Firefox 15 prevents most memory leaks caused by add-ons, including developer favorite, Firebug.

Mozilla has been working to solve Firefox's memory issues for some time as part of its MemShrink effort. The payoffs for stock Firefox are already out in the wild, but for most users much of the appeal of Firefox lies with its many powerful add-ons. Unfortunately, those add-ons are often a source of memory leaks as well. Even the good add-ons; even the popular add-ons.