Firefox 4 Beta 12 hits, RC coming up next

Mozilla posted the download link for the twelfth beta version of its upcoming Firefox 4 Web browser late last evening. Mozilla also confirmed that beta 12 will be the last beta version of Firefox 4 until the Release Candidate (RC) is released. Mozilla originally planned to release beta 12 of Firefox 4 sooner than they did, and the RC on February 25th, but ”hardblocker bugs” kept the company from doing that.

Mozilla's Senior Director of Engineering, Damon Sicore, posted on Google Groups yesterday:

Team,
Yesterday we killed the blocker list, and we're down to 12 remaining bugs open, and only four remain without a patch.  We set a goal last week to be done with all of these blockers and to try to be RC ready by today.  Due to everyone's hard work, we're there.  We've accelerated beta 12 to ship today, and the next step is to squash these few remaining bugs.  After this, we're in RC mode, constantly watching the nomination queues for incoming bugs from this last beta. 

For today's triage:  Ask yourself if this was the last bug, would you hold back Firefox 4, with all of the hard work by hundreds of developers for over a year?  Almost no bugs will pass this test.  This is where we are.

Hold the line as we overcome these last few bugs, and quoting Henry Ford, “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”  Our goal is to build a free and open web for everyone, and this is how we do it.

All my best,

Damon

Mozilla fixed 686 bugs in beta 12 of Firefox 4:

• Improved performance and stability
• Improved performance when using Flash Player
• Improved plugin compatibility with support for hardware acceleration enabled
• When hovering over-links, URL displays at the bottom instead of the address bar

Mozilla also launched a new website, http://canweshipyet.com, counting down how many bugs there are left in Firefox 4 (and how many need patches) before they can ship the new Web browser officially. At the time of posting, there are 11 “hard blockers” and 10 software bugs, four of which require a patch.