14 DAY TRIAL // The next major iteration of Mozilla’s open source browser, Firefox 6, is now less than a month away. In fact, the plan is to release Firefox 6 Final in approximately three weeks. Still in Beta at this point in time, Firefox 6 will continue to be offered to early adopters for testing through the Beta channel for the next few weeks. Recently, Mozilla shipped the third Beta refresh of Firefox 6 to testers.
The final Beta will be produced in the immediate future, a Build equivalent to the Release Candidate milestone. Mozilla intends to build Firefox 6 RC next week. Users need to understand that just because Firefox 6 RC will be built in the next 10 days or so, it doesn’t also mean that it will be offered to testers the coming week as well.
“Beta [Firefox 6] has taken 72 change sets across three beta updates. A large majority of these changes were for security and stability issues. Beta will become Firefox 6 and start making its way to users in just under 3 weeks,” Mozilla said.
“That means we only have about 10 days of development left before we have to have the final builds in hand. If you know of something that has to make it for that final build, make sure you’re connecting with the release team sooner rather than later. The final Firefox 6 Beta will most likely be built next week.”
With Firefox 6 out of the way, Mozilla will be able to start focusing in Firefox 7. Following the launch of Firefox 6 Final, Firefox 7 will graduate to the Beta channel from Aurora, also approximately three weeks from now.
“Aurora [Firefox 7] has seen a total of 112 change sets resulting in 93 resolved bugs,” Mozilla said. “Aurora changes have been security and stability fixes. With only three weeks before Aurora becomes Beta, it’s time to start ramping down the churn and really focusing in on the remaining stabilization.”
Firefox 8, currently available to early adopters through the Nightly Channel, will also move into Aurora in about three weeks.
“In the three weeks that you all have been working on Firefox 8, about 1,100 changes sets have landed on mozilla-central resulting in 550 resolved bugs,” the open source browser vendor added.
Come August 16th, 2011, Mozilla will start working on Firefox 9, which will most probably be the first version of the open source browser to ship in 2012.
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.