Looks like Safari 3 will have a window of opportunity, IE8 still missing

Oct 9, 2007 06:59 GMT  ·  By

Having released Firefox 2.0 concomitantly with Microsoft launching Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Mozilla moved its development efforts onward and debuted work on Gran Paradiso. Toward the end of September, Mozilla made available for download a new development milestone of Firefox 3.0. Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 brought to the table not only another stage on the way to Firefox 3.0 and Gecko 1.9, Mozilla's layout engine, but also an overhauled graphical user interface and built in malware protection. A new insight into the evolution of the alpha status of Gran Paradiso reveals that the open source browser is plagued with issues, and in this context, moving the product from Alpha to Beta seems yet far away.

"The number of outstanding blockers is a good way to get a feeling for how much work is left to be done before a milestone or final product release. It can be tricky to coax these numbers out of Bugzilla due to some of the more intricate ways we split things into "Gecko 1.9? and "Firefox 3?. More than 100 bugs are blocking Gran Paradiso M9, 13 of which are unassigned. Another 600 bugs are blocking the final Firefox 3 / Gecko 1.9 release, 200 of which are unassigned. There are an additional 200 bugs nominated for blocking status, mostly in Gecko 1.9 components. Monitoring these numbers will help us focus on what needs to be done for an upcoming milestone and the march towards our final product release," Mozilla revealed.

This will obviously create a window of opportunity for Safari 3.0. Apple currently plans to make its native Mac OS X browser available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Vista by the end of October, simultaneously with the release of Leopard. Firefox 3.0 should have, according to Mozilla's initial plans, already been in Beta phase, but Alpha testing perpetuated due to quality issues. And the amount of bugs cumulated for the next release of the open source browser is a clear indication that Firefox users will have to exercise their patience for the beta. But this is still better than what Microsoft is offering users. Internet Explorer 8 is not even on the horizon. The Redmond company is limiting itself to dogfooding the browser and keeping dead quiet on the development milestones or future plans. At this point in time, IE8 is scheduled to drop sometime at the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009.