Oct 11, 2010 16:32 GMT  ·  By

Yes, there will be a Beta 8 release of the next major iteration of Mozilla’s open source browser, which is currently kin development. Early adopters can now download and start testing an early preview release of Firefox 4.0 Beta 8, this despite the fact that Firefox 4.0 Beta 7 has yet to be launched.

Mozilla had initially planned the release of seven Beta Builds of Firefox 4.0, but it appears that the plans have changed.

With a Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 now cooking, it’s safe to say that the browser vendor managed to derail from the development schedule it made public when it announced the project earlier this year.

However, it’s important to underline that the Firefox 4.0 timetable revealed at the start of the development process wasn’t set in stone by any means, and that it could, and it did change.

Still, at this point in time Mozilla continues to be working in order to produce the final version of Firefox 4.0 by the end of 2010.

“What we've done is created a repository which will be used to build Firefox 4 Beta 7, allowing us to land changes on mozilla-central which will be included in future milestones such as Beta 8,” explained Mozilla’s Director of Firefox Mike Beltzner.

“The nightly "Minefield" builds will continue to be built from mozilla-central, and will now carry the version number "4.0b8pre". The changes which are still required for Beta 7 will first land on mozilla-central (and thus become part of nightly builds) and then will also be committed to the new repository we created.

“No nightly builds will be generated from this new repository, but once the remaining blockers have landed, we'll generate candidate builds for Firefox 4 Beta 7.”

Testers that were running the pre-Beta 7 release of Firefox 4.0 have been receiving updates to the pre-Beta 8 Build of the browser.

Mozilla has so far managed to deliver a total of six Beta development milestones of Firefox 4.0. But with two more Betas also planned, one has to wander whether the company will pull it off and deliver the final version of Firefox 4.0 this year?

Firefox 4 Beta 6 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 4 Beta 6 for Linux is available for
download here.
Firefox 4 Beta 6 for Mac is available for
download here.