Are you ready for Firefox 3.0 Beta 3? As of the second half of December 2007, Mozilla is offering Firefox 3.0 Beta 2. At this point in time, the third beta of the upcoming open source browser is in the final stages of 'baking'. In fact, Mozilla expects to start shipping Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 on February 4th, 2008. Although according to the original Firefox 3,0 timetable, Mozilla should have already wrapped up with the successor of Firefox 2.0 by the end of the past year. However, the deadline of the browser was pushed back to 2008, because of quality concerns.

"We will be pushing back the freeze date for Beta 3 until January 29th. We will have a quiet freeze for the rest of that week before starting builds, on the same timeline as we used for beta 2. As a result, we plan on starting builds first thing on Monday, February 4th. This means all localization changes will need to be checked into CVS by 8 AM UTC on February 4th to make beta 3," revealed Mozilla's Mike Connor.

Further postponing the freeze date for Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 means that the next milestone of the open source browser will not come earlier than February. Following the January 29 code freeze, Mozilla will take a whole week to put together the Beta 3 builds, this including of course all localized versions of Firefox 3.0. According to the current plan, the first public builds of Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 should start being available starting on February 4th.

Still, there is the possibility that Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 will slip further into February. On January 22nd (the original code freeze date), Mozilla had planned the browser to be string complete. This is not the case. In fact, string freeze was pushed back to January 25, just a tad too close for comfort when it comes to the proximity to the February 29 code freeze.

"The string freeze for Firefox 3 has been moved to this Friday, Jan 25th at 11:59pm. After this time, any bug that involves: an addition of a string, changing the meaning of an existing string, changing the localization note of an existing string, disambiguation of an existing string, an additional use of an already landed string in a new part of the UI - will require an explicit approval from drivers, even if the bug is a blocker. If the bug is accepted, it will be tagged with the late-10n keyword," Mozilla explained.