Andre Yoskowitz
19 Dec 2009 13:50
Mozilla announced this weekend that the final release of Firefox 3.6 had been delayed into early 2010, while at the same time releasing 3.5 beta 5 instead of a release candidate.
Beta 5 has 130 new bug fixes, including a major TraceMonkey JavaScript rendering engine bug that was causing crashes. Additionally, the private browsing mode, password retrieval and fast startup mode were updated.
"Beta 5 builds are being tested by QA now, targeting a Thursday release unless we get to RC [Release Candidate] first," Mozilla had said earlier in the week. "We are really, really close to being code-complete & only need 8 more patches and a TraceMonkey merge. If we can go to build today or tomorrow, QA will scrap Beta 5 and we'll release RC to the beta audience ASAP."
"Mozilla released a fifth version of Firefox 3.6 to its more than 600,000 beta users as part of its continuing program to gather feedback and get fixes into the hands of the people evaluating the preview," added Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, via CW. "We expect to be able to issue a release candidate before the end of this year, but we'll likely hold off on the official release until early in the new year."