Firefox 3.5 beta 4 due next week

Chicago (IL) – Mozilla will release Firefox 3.0.9 as a regular maintenance update for the browser next week, but the company will also roll out the fourth beta version of a much more enhanced version, which will include the TraceMonkey Javascript engine. Previously developed under the Firefox 3.1 name, version 3.5 b4 will be made available in the coming week as well.

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 b4 will go into a code freeze tomorrow afternoon with QA scheduled to begin Friday morning. If everything goes to plan, users will be able to download what is generally believed to be the final beta of this browser version as early as April 22. The current release plan indicates that the browser will be made available between April 22 - 24.
 
Following the fourth beta, we expect at least two release candidates of Firefox 3.5, which makes us believe that the final version could be available just about one year after the initial release of Firefox 3.0, which was introduced on June 17, 2008. Users are still advised to treat Firefox 3.5 b4 with caution as there are still bugs that may impact the productivity of production-critical computers.

We expect the final version to post significant performance enhancements thanks to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. “Regular” Firefox users will also get a browser update next week. Version 3.0.9 is scheduled for an April 22 release.

However, if you like to look a bit further into the future, you could download the first pre-alpha release of the next-generation Firefox. Currently called version 3.6, Namoroka and Firefox.next, the browser recently surfaced in Mozilla’s download folders.