Firefox 4 Release Candidate Is Out, Mozilla Announces

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 10 Mar 2011

I have been waiting for this ever since Engineering Project Manager with Mozilla, Christian Legnitto, announced that there will be no more Beta releases after Firefox 4 Beta 12. Ever since that announcement I have been waiting for the Mozilla Foundation to announce that Firefox 4 Release Candidate (RC) has been rolled out. And now I got what I have been waiting for. On March 9th, Mozilla announced that Firefox 4 RC has been released.

“Mozilla Firefox 4 for Windows, Mac and Linux has exited the beta cycle and is now available as a release candidate in more than 70 languages. The millions of users testing Firefox 4 will be automatically updated to this version and will join our Mozilla QA team in validating the new features, enhanced performance and stability and HTML5 capabilities in Firefox 4,” announced Mozilla.

If you didn’t get the Beta, you will not be updated to the RC. So if you would like to get Firefox 4 RC, you can grab it in your language, for whatever operating system you’re on, straight from Mozilla here. According to the release notes the RC comes with “general stability, performance, and compatibility improvements”. And of course, the myriad of new features the Beta releases introduced – you can read all about those features here and in the release notes here.

I have to say I am glad Firefox 4 RC is out – it means that the final, stable version of Firefox 4 will be released soon. And that is when Firefox fans who didn’t want to bother with a buggy Beta or a potentially troublesome RC will no longer avoid the browser. But then I think about the fact that once Firefox 4 Final is out, Firefox Director Mike Beltzner will leave Mozilla, and I’m not that enthusiastic anymore. Back in February, Beltzner announced that once Firefox 4 Final is out, he will leave Mozilla and join DownUnder GeoSolutions, a small startup that builds geological modeling software.

“It’s not a choice I made lightly, I can assure you,” said Beltzner back in Feburary. “I’m incredibly eager to see how Mozilla continues to evolve, shifting its strategy to the new world in which the Web is not just alive and thriving, but evolving and transforming daily. Changing to delivering those Web upgrades by shipping smaller pieces more quickly, providing a new stable of Firefox-ish services – it’s clear that Mozilla’s future is filled with exciting new challenges and opportunities. Add to that the dear friendships I have with so many people in this community, and the simply incredible global work environment we’ve created together … you may assume that the decision took time, consideration, and involved more than a few tears.”


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