Firefox 3.1 delayed for fourth beta

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 5 Mar 2009 at 11:56

Firefox 3.1 has been delayed yet again, with the company inserting a fourth beta in the release schedule as it struggles to beat the bugs out of its new rendering engine.

The new beta means we are unlikely to see the release of Firefox 3.1 until some time in the second quarter.

Firefox 3.1 was originally conceived as a "fast track" release that would incorporate the features that were meant to appear in Firefox 3 but didn't make the cut.

However, the introduction of the new Tracemonkey Javascript rendering engine has significantly delayed development, and even provoked some engineers to call for it to be dropped altogether.

Mike Shaver, Mozilla's head of engineering has effectively ruled that out, though he does appear to have lost patience with the engine, calling for the third beta to be released on 10 March, regardless of the state of Tracemonkey.

"We're going to wrap up beta 3 in the next week regardless of [Javascript] status... a fourth beta will follow approximately six weeks after as a vehicle for more testing of Tracemonkey, video, places and other eagerly-awaited improvements as well as feedback from beta 3," he says on the development notes.

The fact that Firefox 3.1 will arrive so much later than originally intended has spurred some developers to call for it to be renamed Firefox 3.5, reflecting the extra work involved.