Firefox 4 coming soon?

Last we heard from Firefox 4’s beta was a few months ago, but Mozilla developers have posted the first builds of Firefox 4 Beta 10, which is planned to be the final beta before the release of Firefox 4 RC. What does that mean? Well, the gold for the fourth is nearing the horizon!

The pre-Beta 10 builds arrive as Mozilla is getting ready to put Beta 9 into a freeze and release the software possibly later this week. Even with the revised release schedule in place, Mozilla has fallen behind again: Beta 9 was originally planned for a December 16 release. However, the most recent Beta was not published until December 22.

According to Mozilla’s buglog, Beta 9 has still three blocking bugs that need to be fixed, while there are 227 blocking bugs for Beta 10. In fact, the number of bugs may be overwhelming for the final beta and Mozilla may decide to add Beta 11 to the schedule. In the most recent meeting, the developer team mentioned that there will be “at least” one more beta after Beta 9 and a new release schedule was under development.