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November 4, 2009 1:02 PM PST

Mozilla: Firefox 3.6 won't be late

by Stephen Shankland
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Mozilla may have released the first beta of Firefox 3.6 nearly two months late, but the organization believes the final version still will arrive on schedule before the end of the year.

The Mozilla wiki page on version 3.6, code-named Namoroka, listed early September for the scheduled release of the first beta, but it actually arrived October 30. Despite that, Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering, said Mozilla wants to release the browser before the holidays and is sticking by the overall schedule for the open-source Web browser.

"We're still looking at a release candidate in November and (final) release in December at this point," Shaver said in a Tuesday interview.

That means Mozilla has a compressed schedule for producing the final version, but Shaver said coders are working hard. "We're not going to coast into it," he said. "We're going to continue shipping beta updates aggressively."

Those involved in open-source projects, with different motivations and pressures than those in the traditional proprietary software industry, sometimes have an attitude of "we'll ship it when it's done." Mozilla, though, recognizes that time matters even for an open-source project.

"We've always been more quality-driven than time-driven," Shaver said. "But we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness."

Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.
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by karpenterskids November 4, 2009 1:49 PM PST
Maybe I'm missing something, but...what's the rush?


Especially if the results ends up being a rushed product that wasn't tested and debugged sufficiently.
Who needs another one of those?

Why would someone want a new browser "before the holidays"? It's not a Christmas present people would give their loved ones...
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by Tedesco-III November 4, 2009 2:01 PM PST
How will Mozilla Firefox 3.6 be different than Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4?
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by Shankland November 4, 2009 8:21 PM PST
There's a list of many of the changes from 3.5.4 to 3.6 in this story:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10387797-264.html
by shihab313 November 4, 2009 2:59 PM PST
Hi
I started to use Mozilla for 3 month ago,and it work mush better then other;
its going faster ,specialy when i open a maney pages,amazing!!
thanks
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by karpenterskids November 4, 2009 3:34 PM PST
Your comment's a lot better when its read in a Borat accent.
by redmarine November 4, 2009 11:35 PM PST
Haha!(Above)
by exactlyy November 5, 2009 5:19 AM PST
3.6 beta is really faster than 3.5.4
i also love the added windows 7 support .
for people who havnt yet installed it cuz of extensions.
go to
about:config
right click -->new--> boolean
enter this text
EXTENSIONS.CHECKCOMPATIBILITY
and make it false.
all your plugins should work now .
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About Deep Tech

Stephen Shankland, who's covered the computing industry since 1998 and was a science reporter before that, here delves into a wide range of technology trends and offers hands-on tests. His particular interests include Web browsers, cameras, standards, research, science, and start-ups.

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