Apr 22, 2011 13:40 GMT  ·  By

Users have received plenty of warnings to brace themselves for a flood of Firefox major iterations per the Google Chrome model, and to prove that it means business Mozilla revealed that the first Firefox 7 pre-release Build is only approximately a month away.

While it might be hard to believe that development will start on Firefox 7 just two months after Firefox 4.0 Final was released, this is indeed the case.

And not only will the first Alpha builds of Firefox 7 be produced by the end of May 2011, but Firefox 6 will also become available for download and testing through the Aurora channel.

Here’s what Asa Dotzler, Director of Community Development, Mozilla had to say: “The merge forward to Aurora 6 and the beginning of Firefox 7 work is only 33 days away.”

Testers can already download the first Aurora Builds of Mozilla’s open source browser. Firefox 5 was the first post-Firefox 4.0 release to graduate to the Aurora Channel where it will be available for quite some time.

Per the new Mozilla development and release process, next generation Firefox iteration will move rapidly through four Channels, Nightly, Aurora, Beta and Release, and will be offered to the public at six weeks apart, starting with Firefox 5.

According to the current plan, Firefox 5 will be finalized and launched by the end of June 2011, at which time, development for both Firefox 6 and Firefox 7 will be in full swing.

What’s interesting is that as Firefox 6 will hit Aurora, the first Firefox 5 Beta development milestone will also become available for download to early adopters, a Build which can be expected next month, according to Mozilla’s current schedule.

If all goes well, Firefox 5, Firefox 6 and Firefox 7 will all be finalized by the end of 2011.

Firefox 4.0 Final for Windows is available for download here.

Firefox 4.0 Final for Linux is available for download here.

Firefox 4.0 Final for Mac is available for download here.