14 DAY TRIAL // The eighth Beta development milestone of Firefox 4.0 is now available for download. While Mozilla has yet to announce officially the availability of the eight Beta for the next iteration of its open source browser, the bits are already available for download through the company’s FTP servers.
It’s been quite a while since the open source browser vendor delivered a new testing milestone of Firefox 4.0, almost a month and a half.
Fact is that both Beta 7 and Beta 8 have suffered consistent delays that pushed the Firefox 4.0 project well into 2011.
However, early adopters can now grab the fully-fledged Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 and start testing. Make no mistake about it, this is still pre-release software, and Mozilla is quite a long way away from wrapping up the successor of Firefox 3.6.
According to the company, here are the most important changes that Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 brings to the table compared to Beta 7:
“•The Firefox Sync setup experience has been greatly improved across desktop and mobile devices
•Speed, functionality, and compatibility improvements to WebGL
•Additional polish for the Firefox Add-ons Manager.”
There are no less than 57 localized versions of Firefox 4 Beta 8 available for download and testing.
Mozilla still has to deliver at least two additional Beta milestones of Firefox 4.0. And considering the pace at which the last two releases have been provided, it’s rather safe to assume that Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 and Beta 10 will be provided to testers only in 2011.
The open source browser vendor initially planned for Firefox 4.0 to be finalized and released by the end of November 2010.
With the project now postponed considerably, users will be lucky to get Firefox 4.0 Final in the first quarter of 2011. Remember, Mozilla still has to offer a few Release Candidate Builds after it’s done with the Beta testing program.
But at this point in time the development process is focused almost entirely on getting Firefox 4.0 ready for launch. Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 for Mac is available for download here.