14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is extremely close to releasing the ninth Beta development milestone of Firefox 4.0.
In fact, the open source browser maker has already produced the Candidate Builds for Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 and is allowing early adopters to play around with them.
For the time being 4.0b9-candidates are all that testers will be getting out of the upcoming Firefox 4.0 Beta 9, and the builds can be accessed through Mozilla’s FTP servers.
However, the fully-fledged Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 is not that far off in the distance. According to Mozilla’s plans dating back to the past week, the release was set for January 13th, 2011.
Of course, Firefox 4.0 development milestones have been impacted by multiple delays in the past, and this deadline could change.
Still, with the Candidate Builds already produced, Mozilla is right on track to offering Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 to testers by the end of this week, hopefully in just a couple of days at most.
If the browser maker manages to pull the Beta 9 release this early after the delivery of Beta 8 it might just means that the company regained its mojo, and that the remaining development milestones will be provided at a faster pace.
While it initially planned to release Firefox 4.0 no later than November 2010, Mozilla still has a range of releases to deliver before it can wrap up version 4.0 of the open source browser.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 will be followed by Beta 10, which is set to be the final Beta development milestone.
Firefox 4.0 will then graduate to the Release Candidate (RC) stage, at which point testers can continue to see at least a few Builds before the browser is finalized.
Mozilla hasn’t offered a deadline for the availability of Firefox 4.0, but provided that no major issues (blockers) hinder the development process, the wait is bound not to be that long.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 for Mac is available for download here.