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: release candidates
Mozilla has announced it will be releasing the final version of Firefox 3.5 tomorrow, the very last day of its own self imposed deadline.
The release comes little over a year after the official release of Firefox 3.0 and the distribution was accelerated by the quick release of release candidates, most of which were sent to users running 3.0.
Firefox 3.5, originally dubbed 3.1 but changed when more and more features were added to the release, will include a “faster JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey; a privacy mode, which some call “porn mode” for one of its more obvious applications; and location-aware browsing.”
Also notably, the updated browser will include HTML5 support and other enhanced scripting features.
According to recent Net Applications statistics, Firefox owns 22.51 of current browser market share, behind the clear leader Internet Explorer at 65.5 percent but taking more share every day.
