14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is in the finishing stages of the Beta development phase of Firefox 4.0, and is preparing to move beyond it. In this regard, the open source browser maker is now working to wrap up Firefox 4.0 Beta 12, which should ship to early adopters for testing early next week.
If everything goes well, testers could be able to download and start running the twelfth Beta of Firefox 4.0 as early as February 28, 2011, although, depending on whether all bugs will be dealt with or not until then, Beta 12 could also slip into March.
But one aspect of the ongoing development process for Firefox 4.0 seems to be clear, with Christian Legnitto, Firefox release manager at Mozilla, confirming that this is the final Beta release.
Following the launch of Beta 12, Firefox 4.0 will graduate to the Release Candidate stage, a signal that the browser version is extremely close to being finalized.
Mozilla has in fact already started work on Firefox 4.0 RC, with very early post-Beta 12 Builds live on the company’s FTP servers.
The manner in which they are labeled could generate some confusion, so Legnitto wanted to be extremely clear that Mozilla will not produce a Firefox 4.0 Beta 13.
“I just wanted to send a quick note clarifying again that Firefox 4 beta 12 is the last planned beta.
“It may be confusing that nightly builds after beta 12 identify themselves as version 4.0b13pre. The versioning is merely a product of automation. This DOES NOT mean we are having a beta 13,” Legnitto said.
With the RC being offered in early March 2011, I think that there’s a very good chance that Mozilla will release Firefox 4.0 Final by the end of next month, or so. It appears that it won’t be long now until users will be running Firefox 4.0.
Update: Corrections necessary to make it clear that although Mozilla is working on Firefox 4.0 RC, the actual RC Build is not available for download.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 for Mac is available for download here.