While Microsoft made available Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 at the end of August according to the initial plans, Mozilla is falling behind schedule with the development of Firefox 3.1 codenamed Shiretoko. The successor of Firefox 3.0, launched in June 2008, Shiretoko was supposed to debut into beta by the end of August, but this is no longer the case. In fact, not even the Alpha 2 milestone has made it in the past month.

 

Mozilla has only taken Firefox 3.1 into Alpha 2 Release Candidate stage at the end of the past week, but the build is just a nightly release, and not the final Alpha. However, it seems that Shiretoko will make it into Alpha 2 in early September, although the exact date is yet to be determined. The last signals from Mozilla related to Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 indicated that the development milestone would in fact be delivered by the end of this week.

 

Following the release of Alpha 1, Firefox 3.1 will move into Beta stage, with the first build planned for October 2008, and then followed by at least another subsequent Beta. Mozilla has already changed its plans for the delivery deadline of the gold bits of Shiretoko, pointing to either the end of 2008, but most likely to the start of 2009. By that time, Microsoft would have already dropped the final build of Internet Explorer 8, with a launch date reportedly set for November.

 

But with the Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 bits approaching the end of their baking time, Mozilla is closer and closer to introducing a minor update to Firefox 3.0. In this context, Firefox users who are currently upgrading from version 2.0 to 3.0 will continue to update to v3.1. Having debuted the migration process from Firefox 2.0.0.16 to Firefox 3.0.1, Mozilla is now preparing to release version 2.0.0.17 and 3.0.2 simultaneously.

 

In the meantime, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1, Firefox 3.0.1 and Firefox 2.0.0.16 are available for download here.