May 11th, 2008
Firefox 3 RC1 code complete, due in late May
Mozilla now expects Firefox 3 RC1 will be ready to go in late May.
RC1 was originally planned to be released last month but several bugs have arisen during the final phase of development that needed to be addressed, including problems with the new Places bookmarking feature, themes UI and conflicts with Google’s Safebrowing add on.
It looks like are systems are go aside from a trio of minor issues.
”We are code complete for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) … Last night we hit Zarro bugs for Firefox 3. 3 New issues have arisen since then,” wrote Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s VP Engineering who posted a status update on the project Saturday. He said the team planned kickoff builds for RC1 beginning this weekend and would begin the Q&A cycle for Rc1 on Monday.
”The QA cycle for RC1 is more extensive than the betas since this may be our last milestone,” he wrote. “If no unexpected issues arise, RC1 should ship late May. ”
RC1 will be Firefox 3 if no “showstoppers” are found, he added.
The Firefox team has declined repeated requests to discuss the status of Firefox 3 and said it would speak publicly beginning in late May.
Sources familiar with the Mozilla Firefox 3 project told this blogger Firefox 3 is expected to ship in June, but Mozilla spokespeople would not confirm that timeframe.
Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
