14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is pushing out the latest beta-grade Firefox with an RC designation stuck to it, confirming that version 7 Final (Release) will launch publicly on Tuesday, September 27.
Mozilla confirmed in a blog post today that the company has a release candidate for the next version of the popular web browser, confirming that “The most recent Firefox Beta is our release candidate.”
Provided that no issues are found with the build, “this version will be released to all Firefox users on Tuesday, 2011-09-27,” according to the team of engineers maintaining the browser.
Spanning only a few weeks of development (now that refreshes are much more frequent with the multiple channels, Nightly, Aurora, Beta, and Release), Firefox 7 brings significant memory usage improvements, drops the 'http' and the trailing slash from the address box, and uses a Telemetry add-on to report memory usage and performance to Mozilla.
The beta also enables developers to measure page load time and site navigation so they can identify how to make website performance improvements, and offers an additional way to display CSS 3 text that overflows a layout area.
Firefox 7 Final will also leverage the JavaScript garbage collector to free up memory more frequently. This improves performance when users have many tabs open, or forget to quit the app for an extended period of time.
“If you aren’t running Firefox Beta and wish to help test, please download Firefox Beta from http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/beta,” says the development team at Mozilla.
Note that if you are running an up-to-date Firefox Beta, this means you are already using the RC (release candidate), which ultimately means that you don’t have to download anything else until next week.
Mac users looking to see if they’re updated with the newest Firefox build can choose Firefox from their Mac’s menubar and select About Firefox.