As Microsoft has just started serving the first bits of Internet Explorer Beta 1, Mozilla is making headway with the development of the fourth Beta for Firefox 3.0. Having dropped the invitations for the private testing program of IE8 Beta 1 last week, the Redmond company began shipping the browser, and you will be able to get a taste of it right here. At the same time, Mozilla is pressing onward with the development of its open source browser. Firefox 3.0 was scheduled to be finalized by the end of 2007, but judging by the current pace, the fourth beta will be made available in early March with no plans yet public for the gold bits.

On February 26, "we reviewed the remaining number of P1 and P2 blockers on our lists, and decided that we would go ahead with tonight's Firefox 3 Beta 4 code freeze and then bake nightly builds for a few days before handing off the code to the Build and Quality Assurance teams. During the baking period, all Firefox 3/ Gecko 1.9 component owners have been asked to triage their blocker nomination and blocking bug lists by Friday noon PST in order to determine: which bugs, if any, require a beta release vehicle and which bugs, if any, need to block the final release of Firefox 3," Mozilla stated.

On February 27, Mozilla implemented a few changes in the bug triage for the next milestone of the open source browser. The move is essentially called for the prioritizing of the Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 bugs, but at the same time there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Mozilla referred specifically to the bugs for the Beta 4 version, but also for the final build of the browser. It's a little early to say if Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 will be the last Beta build of Firefox 3.0 or if the next version will be synonymous with the product going gold. However, one thing is for sure, both IE8 Beta 1 and Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 are just around the corner.