14 DAY TRIAL // The twelfth Beta development milestone of Firefox 4.0 is just around the corner. Mozilla has published the first preview Build of Firefox 4.0 Beta 12 making the bits available through its FTP servers. Users need to know that this is just the candidate of Firefox 4.0 Beta 12, and not the full Beta. As such, they might want to steer clear of the nightly build until at least such as time when Mozilla will wrap up the actual twelfth Beta.
At the same time, early adopters that are feeling a tad adventurous can very well download the Firefox 4.0 Beta 12 preview and get a taste of what the successor of Beta 11 will bring to the table.
In case it is unclear, Beta 12 is a release focused on delivering fixes for all the blockers that are preventing Firefox 4.0 to graduate to the Release Candidate stage.
Christian Legnitto, a Firefox release manager at Mozilla provided an update of the browser’s evolution last week noting that if all goes well, Beta 12 will be followed by the first RC.
However, in the eventuality that issues continue to impact Firefox 4.0, additional Betas may very well follow.
“Beta 12 is currently planned to be the last beta (by definition due to not having any betaN hardblockers after it is created), but we still might need a beta 13 if issues found in beta 12 need beta coverage before a release candidate (RC),” Legnitto stated.
Mozilla was planning to offer Firefox 4.0 RC to testers by the end of February 2011, but considering the delay suffered by Beta 12, it think that a more realist launch date for the first Release Candidate is early March 2011.
Especially if the fixes introduced in Beta 12 generate regression problems for Firefox 4.0, and a Beta 13 release will also be necessary.
Either way, Firefox 4.0 will not be finalized until the end of March at the earliest, although depending on the number of RC Builds, April 2011 could also be a possibility.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 for Mac is available for download here.