March 10th, 2009
Firefox 3.1 beta 3 "done," Firefox 3.5 beta 4 due April 14
Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is done and beta 4 is slated to be released on April 14.
That’s the latest from the Mozilla Firefox team, which held its weekly meeting on Tuesday.
Q&A is expected to sign off on the long delayed beta 3 on Thursday and the beta 3 web page should be up and running tonight, a key Mozilla Firefox developer said.
As expected, the team last week upgraded the code version number to Firefox 3.5. The new naming with appear when beta 4 makes its debut.
The code freeze for beta 4 is planned for April 6, but some developers were a bit skeptical that the current number of remaining bugs — 94 in all — can be whittled down to fewer than 10 in three weeks.
Team leaders said they expect more bugs will pop up after beta 3 hits the web — but urged developers to drive hard toward the finishing line.
“I’m glad we’re done with beta 3 and we’ll continue to work out issues with Tracemonkey and other things but we need to keep the focus on driving blockers down,” said Mike Beltzner, Firefox 3.5 team leader. “It feels like we’re taken the foot off the gas.”
Firefox 3.5 — formerly known as Firefox 3.1 — was originally expected to be available in early January but the team opted to add key new features such as private browsing and Tracemonkey. The decision pushed back the release from the originally planned date.
Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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