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Firefox 4, The State Of Development

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:46:45 +0000

When is Mozilla going to release the next beta of Firefox? When the release candidate and final build of the web browser? News are scarce at this point in time and I will try my best to give you an overview of things to come. The latest public beta version of Firefox 4 is beta 11 which has been available for some time. We knew that the team planned to release at least one additional beta to fix blockers that prevented the release candidate and final release. What we did not know was if that would be the last beta, or if another beta release would follow suite.

Asa Dotzler confirmed yesterday that Firefox 4 Beta 12 “went to builds” on February 22. He furthermore mentioned that “this final (!!!) beta contains fixes to more than 200 hard and soft blockers”. The important word here is final which means that beta 12 will be the last beta before the release candidate.

He notes that there is still some patching to do for the release candidate build, with 26 remaining blockers of which half “have patches in some state of evaluation”. Mozilla has not yet revealed a release date for the final beta, release candidate and final version of Firefox 4. It is however likely that the beta will be available in the coming days, maybe even today.

I let you know once it becomes available so that you can update your beta versions of Firefox 4 to the latest as quickly as possible. Asa posted an interesting link in the newsletter pointing to Facebook’s updated HTML5 games benchmark which sees Firefox in the lead followed by Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and Google Chrome. Opera and Safari follow with a big performance drop. The reason? Hardware acceleration. The three browsers that lead support hardware acceleration, while the other’s do not at this point in time. Opera however has already mentioned that they plan to integrate hardware acceleration in a future version, and that it will support at least the Windows XP browser as well.

Back to Firefox. If the developers stay on track it is likely that we will see a final release of Firefox 4 in the first half of March 2011.

Firefox 3.6 RC1 Released

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:01:41 +0000

Some websites reported already yesterday that the first release candidate of Firefox 3.6 has been uploaded to the Mozilla ftp server. This was actually not the case as they linked to a nightly build and not the final release candidate build. Having said that it is likely that the two versions are identical. Firefox 3.6 RC1 is currently being uploaded to ftp mirror sites worldwide to ensure a fluent distribution once the automatic update check in the web browser recognizes the web browser update.

The release notes have not been updated yet and it is not easy to find information about the changes in the release candidate.

Firefox users who want to read up on the changes before updating their web browser to Firefox 3.6 RC1 might need to wait up to 48 hours before the release preparations have been completed. The release is currently only available at Mozilla ftp servers but it is likely that it will be picked up soon by download portals like Betanews who usually host new versions of the web browser before it is officially announced at the Mozilla website.

Mozilla Posts Firefox 3.6 Beta and 3.5.4 Release Candidates

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:37:46 +0000

The first release candidate of the upcoming Firefox 3.6 Beta has been posted at the Mozilla ftp server. Next to it the second release candidate for Firefox 3.5.4 which is also available at the ftp server. Both releases are so called release candidates which means that they are close to the final version. Firefox users who want to give those versions a try can download them directly from the ftp server or one of the mirror ftps. Both final versions of the Firefox release candidates that have been posted are slated for a final release in the upcoming week.

Firefox 3.5.4. is a stability and security update for the latest stable release of Firefox. Users who are concerned about security might want to consider switching to the release candidate right now to patch the security holes.

The release candidate for version 3.6 Beta of the web browser on the other hand promises better performance not only executing JavaScript but also for other factors like starting Firefox or loading pages.

You can download both versions of Firefox from the Mozilla ftp server.

Firefox 3.5.4 RC 2
Firefox 3.6 Beta RC 1

Firefox users who do not want to install beta and release candidates need to wait until October 21 which is the scheduled date for the Firefox 3.5.4 release.