Firefox 7 Starts Cooking

Mozilla has already started work on Firefox 7. This actually makes sense, especially considering the fact that the current plan is to have Firefox 7 wrapped up and available for download by the end of 2011.

As some users might know, the open source browser vendor overhauled the Firefox development process and release cycle following the advent of Firefox 4.0.

Starting with Firefox 5 and moving onward, the company intends to deliver new major iterations of Firefox approximately six weeks apart.

Firefox 5 is in Beta at this point in time, and will be finalized in about a month, at which time, end users will get it.

With Firefox 5 having moved to the Beta channel, Mozilla’s focus shifted to its successors, first to Firefox 6 and then to Firefox 7.

“It's Mozilla Merge Day! Onward to Firefox 7,” twitted Asa Dotzler, Director of Community Development, Mozilla yesterday.

Long story short, “5 is in Beta, 6 is in Aurora, 7 is in Nightly,” Dotzler explained on Twitter. A few hours later he added “And, we're done. mozilla-central is now Firefox 7. mozilla-aurora is now Firefox 6.”

This doesn’t mean however that there are Firefox 7 and Firefox 6 releases suited for use by end users. Instead, the Builds provided by Mozilla still qualify as pre-release software designed for early adopters to test future versions of the browser.

What the Firefox channel transitions described above by Dotzler mean is that Firefox 7 has now started cooking.

Testers can grab very early releases of Firefox 7, namely Nightly Builds, and take them out for a spin.

Still, I believe that they might be more interested in Firefox 6 Aurora. Now, while Firefox 6 graduated to the Aurora channel, an official Firefox 6 Aurora build is not yet available from Mozilla, but it will be soon, so testers just need to be patient a tad longer.

Per the new development model, after Firefox 5 is released on June 21st, 2011, Firefox 6 will move into Beta, and the first Firefox 7 Aurora build will become available for download.
 
Keep your eyes on this space, or follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know when that happens.

Firefox 5 Beta for Windows is available for download here.

Firefox 5 Beta for Mac is available for download here.

Firefox 5 Beta for Linux is available for download here.