Aug 9, 2011 16:01 GMT  ·  By

In approximately a week, users running Firefox 5 and earlier will be able to upgrade to the latest release of Mozilla’s open source browser, Firefox 6. Firefox 6 Beta Refresh 5 was released recently and is currently available for download to early adopters.

As I’ve already said, Beta Refresh 5 can be considered the Release Candidate (RC) development milestone of Firefox 6 and a sign that Mozilla is indeed very close to wrapping up the next major iteration of the browser.

Launched on August 5, 2011, Firefox 6 Beta Refresh 5 is currently being tested by approximately 640,000 early adopters, according to Mozilla.

The good news is that it seems that there are no problems, especially no regression issues, with Firefox 6 Beta Refresh 5.

This means that Mozilla can go ahead and start putting together the final Build of Firefox 6, which apparently is the plan for this and next week.

Mozilla intends to “Build off of mozilla-release after the [sign-off] meeting on Wednesday, 2011-08-10; have the builds ready on Thursday, 2011-08-11; QA checks the mozilla-release build on Thursday, 2011-08-11; push the mozilla-release build to the beta audience early Friday, 2011-08-12 and go to mirrors late Monday, 2011-08-15.”

The plan detailed above will happen only if no problems are detected with Firefox 6. In the eventuality that issues will be identified, Mozilla will most likely postpone the release until they’re resolved, no more than a few days.

However, looking at the current schedule, I believe it’s possible to have Firefox 6 Final available for download as early as August 16th, 2011.

Of course, with Firefox 6 finalized, Mozilla will also deliver Firefox 7 Beta and Firefox 8 Aurora, as well as start work on Firefox 9, although all of this will most likely not happen on August 16th.

Firefox 6 Beta, Firefox 7 Aurora and Firefox 5 for Windows are available for download here.

Firefox 6 Beta, Firefox 7 Aurora and Firefox 5 for Linux are available for download here. Firefox 6 Beta, Firefox 7 Aurora and Firefox 5 for Mac are available for download here.