Mozilla Mulls Adding a Third Beta to Firefox 3.1 Schedule
The second Firefox 3.1 beta release is past due, but already Mozilla says that working out the remaining kinks in the next revision of Firefox will likely require a third beta before the final release arrives.
In a message to the Mozilla developer planning list, Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s “Phenomenologist,” says that the new features set to arrive in beta 2 — Private Browsing Mode, TraceMonkey and more — “will benefit from multiple beta releases.”
Mozilla ended up with a very similar plan for Firefox 3.0, adding a fourth beta at the last minute to ensure that all the bugs were squashed before the final release.
The good news is that Mozilla plans to make Firefox 3.1 beta 2 a stable enough release for add-on developers to start testing their code against. Mozilla has already called on add-on developers to pick up the pace when it comes to making extensions Firefox 3.1 compatible, but the addition of a third beta will give developers a bit more time to catch up.
If accepted, Beltszner’s plan calls for a beta 3 release later this year, though all the features arriving in the final release will need to be part of beta 2. The final version of Firefox 3.1 is currently set to arrive in early 2009.
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