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Firefox 4 struggling to reach finishing line

By Barry Collins

Posted on 23 Sep 2010 at 09:57

Mozilla may release an eighth beta of Firefox 4 before heading to Release Candidate, as the open-source developer struggles to get the new browser out of the door.

Mozilla released the first beta of Firefox 4 in early July, but has since added a flurry of new features - such as App Tabs and Panorama - in successive betas, increasing the complexity of the release.

The Mozilla release schedule has a seventh beta pencilled in for the second half of this month, although there's speculation that an eighth beta might be issued before a release candidate, which isn't due until the second half of October.

In the meantime, Mozilla has a mountainous list of bugs to work through. The blockers list of bugs that need to be fixed pre-launch currently stands at 753 entries.

Mozilla's weekly meeting notes state that the developers are overdue on the release of beta 7 because of the extensive blockers list, which could have a knock-on effect for future releases.

However, there will be no new user interface or platform features added after the seventh beta, as Mozilla tries to get the job done.

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User comments

I've been using the Firefox 4 beta for the last couple of days now, and haven't noticed any instability. I'm really looking forward to the final release, and the release candidates.

By pbryanw on 23 Sep 2010

Buggy

I have stopped using the Beta, very buggy for me. FF title bar goes buggy after a while then reverts to a non aero style window. Crashes when opening Citrix apps.

By DaChimp on 23 Sep 2010

Lots of problems

Had lots of crashes and other problems with the beta, not to mention that GPU acceleration makes text ugly to read instead of being sharp and well focused like normal.

By Mark535 on 23 Sep 2010

YMMV

I have been using FF4 since Beta 1 on Win7, Using the same Xenapp plugin that I used on 3.6.x, and I had no issues using Citrix apps. IN fact, I'd say they have become more responsive than usual.

However, some random website coding can cause FF beta to choke unexpectedly. Using the feedback to report them should help the developers to track down the root cause and sort them out before launch.

By BlueLeader on 23 Sep 2010

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