14 DAY TRIAL // The twelfth Beta development milestone of Firefox 4.0 also appears to be the last before the next generation of the open source browser graduates to Release Candidate stage.
Following the release of Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 Mozilla revealed that although it was planning to release no mere than a dozen Betas, a beta 13 release was also possible, in the eventuality that it couldn’t have dealt with all the bugs still blocking the browser from moving forward to RC.
However, the open source browser vendor managed to deal with some of the blockers already, and Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's Director of Firefox, noted that the first Release Candidate of Firefox 4.0 could follow the Beta 12 Build.
“There are currently fewer than 20 "hard" blocking issues which have been identified as requiring beta coverage and only 7 without patches.
"At this point in time I do not believe we will require an additional beta, and am recommending that we continue to push hard to close these blockers out over the next few days,” Beltzner stated.
“People have asked me for a code freeze estimate, and my best estimate is: as soon as possible, and when that list is at "Zaroo Boogs Found". Let's all do what we can to get it there sooner rather than later.”
"Zaroo Boogs Found" is a phrase used in software development to indicate that a product is ready for shipping.
Users need to understand that reaching “zero bugs” is impossible, and that instead, software developers aim to resolve as much bugs as possible, getting the software to a specific quality standard, and then shipping it.
The remaining bugs generally have only a small impact and the launch of a piece of software takes priority over resolving all of the issues.
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.