Mozilla: Firefox 4 launching on March 22nd

Software

Mozilla said on Wednesday that RC1 of its Firefox 4 build has received a “very warm welcome,” and that since there aren’t any known issues, IT and Marketing have given the go-ahead to launch the final build on March 22nd. Firefox 4 will meet stiff competition from IE 9 and Chrome 10 when it launches, but it provides an updated user interface that Mozilla says is both sleeker and easier to use. Firefox 4 also lets users synchronize settings, passwords, bookmarks, history and open tabs with other devices, and it allows users to drag and drop open tabs into groups that can be named and arranged. Lastly, there’s a new and improved way to manage Firefox add-ons. While March 22nd is the current launch date, Mozilla does warn that there is the potential for a delay. “If at any time we discover issues that would block final release, we would issue an RC2 as soon as possible, reset the ship date, and communicate to everyone,” said Damon Sicore, Mozilla’s senior director of platform engineering. To get a look at what’s to come on the 22nd, you may want to give RC1 a whirl.

[Via Life Hacker]

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10 Comments
  • Calvin Williams

    I’ll have to judge the final release, but it’s going to be hard to part me from Chrome. IE9 definitely didn’t even cross my mind.

  • Anonymous

    Firefox 4 RC1 is awesome!

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZX7I3VN423YBFEWTEQOQ5JR5ME Retro

      agreed

  • AlaskaHome1959

    What a pleasant and refreshing change. Instead of the marketing team setting a release date and demanding the developers meet it (ready or not), the marketing people are instead restrained from any action until the development people give approval. This is the way it should be. Sadly, this is the exception rather than the rule.

  • GreatDay

    Oh man, I hate new release days. I’ll want it, but I’ll have to restrain myself because half my favorite Extensions won’t work for about a month. Oh Man……….

    • Swanny

      There’s been plenty of time for devs to update their extensions to work with FF4, so most popular extensions seem to already be working. You can always force extensions to work anyway, even if the addons site says that it isn’t compatible with FF4.

  • Rob

    It’s going to take a lot to pull me away from chrome. Ie9 gave it a shot, but still fell short.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZX7I3VN423YBFEWTEQOQ5JR5ME Retro

      Too much Google in your life increases your chances of a stroke.

  • sirpaul

    This update better fix the performance issue with the browser. Firefox used to be so fast – now I sometimes find myself firing up IE when FF is acting up.

  • http://www.vgchartz.com SuperChunk

    Downloaded RC1 last night. It works really good. Seems noticeably faster and I overall like the new layout more than the older one.

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