Mike Beltzner, the Director of Firefox has said today that release candidates (RC) for Firefox 4 will be available at the beginning of 2011.
Beta 7 of the new browser is set for release in the next week.
Mozilla says Beta 7 will be a “code freeze” for the browser, meaning that new features can no longer be added afterwards.
After b7, the browser will be delivered to add-on developers.
Says Beltzner:
“As those who have been tracking our nightly builds know, great things are happening with Firefox 4. The user interface changes are converging, the graphics and layout features are wrapping up, and recently the JavaScript engine was dramatically improved. The result is a fast, capable Firefox that provides better speed and responsiveness for web applications and users. Completing this work is taking longer than initial estimates indicated as we track down regressions and sources of instability. As part of our commitment to beta users, we will not ship software before it is ready.
Development on Firefox 4 has not slowed down and strong progress is being made daily. However, based on the delays in completing the “feature complete” Beta 7 milestone against which our Add-on developers and third-party software developers can develop, as well as considering the amount of work remaining to prepare Firefox 4 for final release, we have revised our beta and release candidate schedule: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4/Beta
The frequent beta releases have been extremely helpful in identifying compatibility issues with existing web content, so we plan on continuing to release beta milestones through the end of December. Our estimate is now that release candidate builds will ship in early 2011, with a final release date close behind. Please note that, as always, this schedule is subject to change based on feedback from users and community members.”
Result for: compatibility issues
Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO has compared Apple’s recently launched iPhone 4 to their own Windows Vista, which was plagued with problems from the start, eventually becoming one of the company’s worst operating systems, ever.
“It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that,” says Turner.
Vista launched in 2007, and users instantly berated how much memory the operating system used, as well as other glaring problems like software and driver compatibility issues.
Turner took a small shot at the iPhone 4 and its antenna issues when asked about the company’s upcoming Windows Phone 7: “One of the things I want to make sure you know today is that you’re going to be able to use a Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a phone call.”
Last week, Consumer Reports, the respected nonprofit organization that publishes guides on all kinds of products and makes recommendations to consumers said yesterday it could not recommend the Apple iPhone 4, due to the antenna issues.
But hey, if worst comes to worst, you can always just use duct tape.
Result for: compatibility issues
According to court papers filed late last week, the electronics manufacturing giant Samsung has had a class action lawsuit filed against it by early adopters of the BDP-1200 Blu-ray player which has had compatibility issues with a few Blu-ray discs.
The man behind the suit, a Connecticut man by the name of Bob McGovern, said he filed the suit “on behalf of thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands” of BDP-1200 buyers who only later found out that the player was “incompatible with numerous Blu-ray disc titles.”
Although the suit does not mention which titles the player is incompatible with or what makes them incompatible, McGovern alleges that “Samsung was fully aware” of the problem at the time of manufacturing yet it has still not updated or repaired the player.
The Fantastic Four sequel, one of the problem discs was previously reported but Samsung said that the problems were fixed by a firmware update. This is clearly not the case for McGovern and many other early adopters.
