The Mozilla Foundation will not release Firefox 4 next month because of development and programming issues leading to a delay until early 2011. Firefox fans were excited to be a few weeks away from the final release of Firefox 4, but Mozilla doesn't want to rush the new browser to the public before it's ready for prime-time.
A release candidate will be made available in early 2011 (after "beta milestones" are reached later this year) with a final release expected in early 2011. Mozilla programmers, however, admit the time table could change again if problems arise, so a further delay is possible. It seems rather unlikely the launch date will be moved up to an earlier date, while programmers seek feedback from test users.
"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," writes Mike Beltzer, Mozilla VP of engineering, also noting that "we have revised our beta and release candidate schedule."
Once released, Firefox 4 will include native HTML 5 support, a cleaner user interface, better high-definition video playback, and plug-in optimization features.
Developers must ensure they use these extra few months to iron out as many bugs as possible while still working with the community -- there is now increased pressure from rivals that Mozilla could previously shrug off.
I used to rely primarily on Firefox alone, but have started to embrace Google Chrome and Opera on a more frequent basis. Some of my Firefox plug-ins have not worked very well as of late, and security concerns linger. Firefox 4 offers Mozilla the chance to respond to recent victories won by Google, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Safari as the browser wars continue into 2011.
