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Firefox 3.7 / Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 3 Cooking

Could be released by the end of this week

Mar 10, 2010 16:02 GMT  ·  By
Firefox
   Firefox

Mozilla is hard at work on the next major version of its open source browser, and early adopters can already get a taste of the successor of Firefox 3.6. Two preview releases of Firefox vNext have already been made available for download, and could very well be followed by a third by the end of this week. Mozilla's Benjamin Smedberg reveals that plans are in place to deliver a third early preview of Gecko 1.9.3 to testers at the end of this week.

Firefox 3.7 is the current moniker used to mark the project creating the next iteration of Firefox. However, this doesn’t mean that Firefox 3.7 will also be the final label under which Mozilla will ship the successor of v3.6. In fact, the two Alpha development milestones of Firefox 3.7 are referred to in accordance with the underlying rendering engine as Mozilla Developer Previews of Gecko 1.9.3.

According to Smedberg, the Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 3 would need to introduce fixes for hardware support. Early adopters already know that Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 brought to the table support for the DirectWrite and Direct2D APIs, via DirectX in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. However, based on the progress that developers made thus far, additional features could be introduced in the upcoming Alpha release.

The next Alpha Build of Firefox 3.7 / Gecko 1.9.3 could also be served automatically to testers. Mozilla is apparently looking to put together a base of Alpha users and delivering the release as an automatic update would certainly help.

While nothing is set in stone at this point in time, Firefox 3.7 / Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 3 could be offered this weekend, or by early next week, judging from the way Mozilla handled the delivery of the Alpha 2 Build.

Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2/ Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 for Windows is available here.
Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2/ Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 for Mac OS X is available here.
Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2/ Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.6 Final for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Final for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Final for Linux is available for download here