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Having released the fourth Beta development milestone of Firefox 4.0, Mozilla is currently focusing on building the Beta 5 release, while gearing up to the feature freeze stage in the browser’s evolution.
Essentially, the browser vendor is getting ready to decide the feature set that will make it into the final version of Firefox 4.0.
In this regard, some features that have been proposed for the next major iteration of Mozilla’s open source browser might not actually be included into the final version of Firefox 3.6’s successor.
Mozilla certainly has a lot on its hands when it comes down to delivering Firefox 4.0. And fact is that the deadline for the official release is getting closer and closer.
Firefox 4.0 needs to be wrapped up by the end of 2010, and this means that the launch deadline is 3 – 4 months away at least. Yet, Mozilla still has to deliver Firefox 4.0 Beta 5, 6 and 7, at least, although additional Betas could follow.
“A few features are at risk,” Mozilla writes, enumerating the following items:
“- indexedDB unlikely to be included (spec is changing rapidly, security implications to be resolved)
- websockets likely to be included, but only as an experimental & prefixed feature possibly not matching spec (spec changing rapidly with new owner)
- some of the new UI features may not make the cut off
- priority is performance, UI upgrades and support for JetPack SDK.”
Some Firefox 4.0 UI Elements and Features Could Be Killed - Softpedia
All I hope, is that they don't decide at the last minute "Nah, the new interface is no good". AFAIK, the new interface stuff works just fine and is customizable enough. I just hope they don't start chopping features because they're not technically "finished", so to speak, when they work just fine in the betas.
I'd rather they take their time and get it right, then rush it out buggy. Like I said elsewhere, the pre versions are running fine.
Ditto. Although I'd want them to tell us that up-front, rather than pushing it out 1 week at a time for 2-3 months...
I've had a shockingly high occurrence of crashes since updating to Beta 4, so hopefully they can get that sorted. Prior to Beta 4, it never crashed. Ever. Beta 4 crashes on me several times per day. Thankfully, it saves my tabs.
My performance is perfect, security and stability also. The only thing I've noticed different is the load time on a cold boot, if it hasn't been in memory, it opens, and there's a short hesitation of the GUI. I'm certain this will be optimized however, or maybe it is just me.
I've been using D2D the entire time, I wanted to allow myself to get used to the different text look, and it has grown on me, I leave it on 24/7 now. (Hardware Acceleration)
I'm very pleased, but I don't usually run a Beta this much, for fear of being frustrated with features being cut on final. I really like the new UI, however if what has been leaked of IE9 is realistic, I like IE better, for now, but I need to wait and use it to be certain.
The preview is very nice, good content, frame rates, I just really like it, and I've been waiting a long time to use Microsoft's browser confidently. I hope it's good this time around.
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