Firefox 4 Delayed Once Again

If you've been using the beta versions of the Firefox 4 browser from Mozilla, you already know that it will be one of the biggest browser releases of the year, designed to compete neck-and-neck with Google Chrome, which is rapidly gaining market share. Just a few days ago, Mozilla officials delivered a roadmap for moving out of beta testing with Firefox 4, which we covered here. Now, Mozilla has put the brakes on the final version of Firefox 4, and plans to deliver a whopping 12th beta version.

Days ago, Mozilla's Christian Legnitto put up this post clarifying plans for an 11th beta of Firefox 4 and a planned February delivery date for the final version. Now, in a new post, Legnitto confirms that there will be a 12th beta. Beta 11 is finished, and Mozilla has solicited a lot of community input on bug fixes and the like, but it is starting to look like we won't have any chance of seeing a final Firefox 4 in February.

Firefox 4 is a major release, and open source browsers are defining competition in the browser arena, with Internet Explorer's star fading fast. In addition to performance increases, version 4 of Firefox takes advantage of the JetPack architecture for easy plug-in creation, has thorough support for HTML 5, and will support Google's WebM HTML 5 video format. Firefox 4 also upgrades the way bookmarks and browsing history are handled, and boots much faster.

We'll have to stay tuned to Mozilla for an actual release date for the final version.