The final version of Firefox 3.0 is planned for general availability in June 2008. The successor of Firefox 2.0, which was dropped all the way back in October 2006, almost concomitantly with Internet Explorer 7, was initially planned for delivery at the end of 2007. Due to quality concerns, the development process of Firefox 3.0 slipped into 2008, and has now passed its 12th developer milestone. Additionally, users of the open source browser still have a long wait ahead of them, no less than three months, Mozilla Corporation Vice President of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, told Reuters.

Schroepfer did however emphasize that even though Firefox 3.0 is in the final stages of baking, with the finishing touches being applied to the open source browser, the June availability deadline is still a preliminary date subjected to change. Schroepfer also pointed to the end of June for the potential finalization of Firefox 3.0.

On top of this, Mozilla's Vice President of Engineering also stated that the latest development milestone of the browser, Firefox 3.0, is ready for prime time, and that end users can feel free to deploy it. This despite the fact that on March 10, 2008, the day Mozilla released Beta 4, it accompanied the build with the following message: "We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 4 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only."

On March 19, Mozilla performed the code freeze for Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 which is planned for March 27, at the end of the next week. Even at its current pace, Mozilla will still drop Firefox 3.0 on the market before Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8. The Redmond company released IE8 Beta 1 on March 5 and is working its way toward Beta 2, expected to drop sometime this summer.

Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 is available here.
Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 can be grabbed here.