14 DAY TRIAL // The final Build of Firefox 5 is less than a week away, with no changes to Mozilla’s plan to launch the successor of Firefox 4.0 on June 21st, 2011, at least not at the time of this article.
Sure, Mozilla still has to finalize Firefox 5, which is currently still in Beta, but things are looking promising enough.
The open source browser vendor made available for download a new Beta Build of Firefox 5 to early adopters.
Testers that have been playing around with Firefox 5 Beta and the few refreshes to this development milestone know not to call the latest release Beta 6, despite the fact that it’s labeled Firefox 5.0b6.
According to Mozilla, the next version of its open source browser is in the end game, and Firefox 5.0 b6 might very well be the last Beta update.
More importantly, Firefox 5.0 b6 could graduate to be the Release Candidate development milestone, a Build which will signal that Mozilla is indeed extremely close to wrapping up the version 5 of its open source browser.
“We need to declare beta "done", pull the source to the release repo, do one additional build, and hand it off to QA,” revealed Christian Legnitto, Firefox release manager at Mozilla, adding that this would involve the “explicit signoff from teams declaring Firefox 5 beta 6 our release candidate so that we can publicize it as such.”
Users can track the evolution of Firefox 4.0’s successor, with a focus on Firefox 5.0 RC via the Releases/Firefox 5/RC Signoffs wiki page.
As I’ve already said, it looks like Mozilla is right on track to finalize Firefox 5 and deliver downloads to end users on June 21st, 2011.
Of course, it all depends on the quality of the Firefox 5.0 b6 Beta, and whether feedback and testing will reveal that the release is ready to be labeled as RC.
UPDATE: Mozilla just released another Beta - Firefox 5.0b7. Firefox 5 Beta (Firefox 5.0b7) for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 5 Beta (Firefox 5.0b7) for Mac is available for download here.
Firefox 5 Beta (Firefox 5.0b7) for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 6 Aurora for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 6 Aurora for Mac is available for download here.
Firefox 6 Aurora for Linux is available for download here.