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Firefox 3.6 beta held up once more

By Barry Collins

Posted on 22 Oct 2009 at 15:13

The launch of the Firefox 3.6 beta has been delayed once more, as Mozilla struggles to adapt the browser for Windows 7.

The Firefox 3.6 beta was due to arrive yesterday, to coincide with the launch of Windows 7. However, problems with Microsoft's latest and greatest appear to be holding up the browser.

Notes from the Firefox Delivery Meeting held yesterday state that "due to [a] lack of Windows 7 testers, we missed bug 522416 which was causing ACID3 hangs and crashiness on that platform; took a while to fix".

The notes also state that Mozilla is having trouble with the Aero Peek feature in Windows 7, with the implementation described as a "little bit buggy at the moment".

Windows 7 isn't the only Microsoft software Mozilla's having trouble with: Silverlight 3 doesn't currently work with the browser, a problem that Mozilla is seeking Microsoft's help with.

The meeting notes state that the Firefox 3.6 beta is "currently going through QA [quality assurance], to be released late this week/early next week."

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User comments

And this is definitely down to "Windows 7 bugs" rather than bugs in a beta version of Firefox (which is hardly bug-free in its release version)?

By halsteadk on 23 Oct 2009

Weird title

The title of your article is misleading. May I suggest "Bugs in the Windows 7 version of FF 3.6"? There is really no need to be (intentionally or not) misleading people about Win7. Thanks.

Laurent Bugnion
Microsoft MVP.

By lbugnion on 23 Oct 2009

Misleading Title to Article

You need to be better with your titles and not have them misleading people. The bugs you mention are really in Mozilla's code base and how the browser works with Windows 7. There are no bugs in Windows 7 that are holding up Mozilla as far as I know. Please be more careful in the future.

By cwoodruff on 23 Oct 2009

Headline amended

Apologies for the poorly-worded headline. It wasn't our intention to mislead.

Now corrected.

Barry Collins
Online Editor

By Barry_Collins on 23 Oct 2009

like making sausages

I sometimes wish mozilla.org were a little less 'open'. I am reminded of the old adage about sausages which taste great until you find out how they're made. With each story like this I lose a little bit more faith in the quality of Firefox's codebase. One day I will have to stop using it. That day will probably come when Google implement browser synching to compete with Mozilla 'Weave'.

By c6ten on 24 Oct 2009

@c6ten You're supposed to help improve the recipe, that's why the sausage kitchen is open! If you prefer blind faith, use MSIE.

By bogus39 on 27 Oct 2009

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