Mozilla Delays 3.1 Release, Adds Another Beta to Schedule

In response to a “particularly troublesome bug” in the new JavaScript engine in Firefox 3.1, Mozilla has announced that they are adding another beta to the release schedule. This will delay the final release until at least the 2nd quarter and possibly even result in the renaming of the release from 3.1 to 3.5.

"A fourth beta will follow approximately six weeks after, as a vehicle for more testing of [the] TraceMonkey [JavaScript engine], video, Places and other eagerly-awaited improvements, as well as feedback from Beta 3," [Mozilla VP of Engineering Mike] Shaver said in a message on a company forum .

thats fine, less bugs = happier clients

Buggier...

Nah, seriously, I'd rather wait a bit and get a better product than have to endure months of buggy code while a patch is being developed.

oh how i do love mozilla, quality>quantity

i've been using Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for months now and although it can be a bit flaky at times it has never crashed on me and is still head and shoulders above anything else on the market, including 3.0

Originally Posted by Terminus

i've been using Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for months now and although it can be a bit flaky at times it has never crashed on me and is still head and shoulders above anything else on the market, including 3.0

Yeah overall I cant tell the difference as far as stability goes between 3 and 3.1 beta. One thing I absolutely hate though is the moving of tabs around. For example every other time I click on a tab it makes it a new window instead of going to it. Its really frustrating, and right now I am using chrome until they fix that "bug".

Mozilla really must have problems with their 3.1 codebase: they've already delayed the thing twice prior to this announcement, and 4.0 (along with a pretty radical new version of Gecko under the hood) has been in the works for a couple of years now. Meanwhile, Chrome will only get better, Safari 4 is amazing, IE8 is on the near horizon, and Opera is nipping around the edges.

I'll say this: if I could get for Safari 4 a version of NoScript and Adblock with collapsable elements and whitelisting, I would switch over and not look back.

Happy 3.0 user here (3.06 actually).. I will keep using official releases only and upgrade to 3.1/3.5 when it's ready.

Originally Posted by carnag3

oh how i do love mozilla, quality>quantity

QFT

Originally Posted by sc3252

For example every other time I click on a tab it makes it a new window instead of going to it. Its really frustrating, and right now I am using chrome until they fix that "bug".

ummm I believe thats a setting under Tools->Options