Major Firefox release delayed

The next version of Firefox has been delayed for a few months, the Mozilla Foundation confirmed Thursday.

Earlier Mozilla stated on its Web site that the next major release of Firefox, called version 1.1, would be released in July. But on Wednesday, lead Firefox engineer Ben Goodger updated the group's roadmap to indicate that the next major release would now not be until after August.

Adding new features to the open-source browser has taken "a bit longer than initially expected", according to Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe.

The next release will now be called Firefox 1.5 as it includes more features than initially planned, Nitot said. "What we have been doing is better than initially planned, so instead of calling it 1.1, we think it deserves the name of 1.5," Nitot told ZDNet UK.

The Mozilla Foundation is planning to release the beta version of Firefox 1.5 in August, and has said the final version will be out sometime around September. Nitot said the foundation generally avoids committing itself to firm release dates because they can easily slip.

"You won't see many occasions where we mention release dates because we know it's risky to mention them," Nitot said. "I've been in the software industry too long to make any commitments in terms of dates--you always end up being wrong."

Earlier this week, ZDNet UK interviewed Asa Dotzler, the community coordinator for the Mozilla Foundation, about some of the most important features in the next major release of Firefox. These include an automatic update system, support for Scalable Vector Graphics, and a package that allows the creation of custom clients for Web services.

Not that anyone on FR uses Firefox. :)

Michael M. Bates: My Side of the Swamp

1 posted on 07/21/2005 12:07:18 PM PDT by Mike Bates

Firefox's ability to defy inertia and actually gain some market share in the browser markets is a testament to the large quality difference between Internet Explorer and Firefox. It takes a lot to get people to switch away from the browser that come with their operating system.

2 posted on 07/21/2005 12:12:01 PM PDT by Moral Hazard ("I believe the children are the future" - Whitney Houston; "Fight the future" - X-files)

It takes a lot to get people to switch away from the browser that come with their operating system.

Especially when it's made more difficult than necessary.

3 posted on 07/21/2005 12:24:20 PM PDT by Mike Bates (Irish Alzheimer's victim: I only remember the grudges.)

It's hard to delay a product which never had a release date in the first place.

Way to go, ZDNet. Quality reporting as usual.

4 posted on 07/22/2005 1:19:21 AM PDT by Terpfen (Liberals call the Constitution a living document because they enjoy torturing it.)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.