Sep 15, 2010 08:35 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla has rolled out the sixth Firefox 4 beta which aims to fix an issue causing rendering errors with plugins affecting Mac OS X users, as well as a stability issue affecting Windows PC users.

Based on the Gecko 2.0 Web platform, “This Firefox 4 Beta is considered to be stable and safe to use for daily web browsing, though the features and content may change before the final product release,” Mozilla says on the web page dedicated to the release notes for every Firefox release.

“At this time many Add-ons may not yet have been tested by their authors to ensure that they are compatible with this release,” the software company adds.

“If you wish to help test Add-on compatibility, please install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter - your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!,” Mozilla notes.

The company then follows with the official changelog for this beta release, revealing that Firefox 4 Beta 6…:

- Fixed a stability issue affecting Windows users. - Fixed an issue causing rendering errors with plugins affecting Mac OS X users.

A detailed description of the problem bugging Mac users is offered over at Bugzilla, a Web-based general-purpose bugtracker and testing tool developed and used by Mozilla.

There, Steven Michaud explains that “In current Minefield nightlies on OS X, events can be sent by the browser to a plugin in a background tab (one that isn't currently focused).”

According to Michaud, “This happens only in Cocoa event mode -- not in Carbon event mode.”

According to the poster, “This can easily be reproduced using the current version of my DebugEventsPlugin from bug 441880.”

Firefox 4 Beta 6 requires a Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor, 128 MB of RAM (Recommended: 256 MB RAM or greater) and around 200 MB of free hard drive space.

Both the beta and the stable versions of Firefox can be downloaded using the link below.

Download Mozilla Firefox for Mac OS X (Free)