Final Firefox 4 Beta ‘Nearly Ready’ After Delay

The next, and possibly final, test version of the Firefox 4 browser is nearing completion, following a delay last week, a Mozilla executive said on Monday.

The browser was originally scheduled for launch in October of last year but has seen a series of delays as the development team look to wipe out remaining bugs. The current deadline is for the final version to be released before the end of this month.

Latest delay

On Thursday Firefox release manager Christian Legnitto wrote to the mozilla.dev.planning newslist that a planned build of Firefox 4 beta 12 would be cancelled while developers worked on fixing “the few remaining betaN hardblockers”.

He confirmed at the time that beta 12 was the last planned test version, but added: “We reserve the right to have a beta 13 if issues found in beta 12 need additional coverage before a release candidate (RC).”

On Monday Asa Dotzler, head of community for Firefox marketing projects, wrote that the next beta was nearing readiness.

“From what I can tell, there are only seven unwritten patches standing between Firefox 4 and hundreds of millions of users,” he wrote in a Twitter posting.

Improvements

Improvements planned for Firefox 4 include better graphics and security, improved synchronisation setup, and a do-not-track option.

The browser faces competition from Google’s Chrome, which is being pushed aggressively by the search giant, amongst others.