David Flynn28 April 2009, 4:10 PM
The fourth beta of Firefox 3.5, released overnight, will be the last before the browser’s code is locked for an expected mid-year debut.
Mozilla’s next-gen browser moved closer to release overnight with the posting of the fourth and final beta for Firebox 3.5, codenamed ‘Shiretoko’.
Firefox program director Mike Beltzner has previously decreed that there are no plans for a Beta 5 release. “After Beta 4 we'll be looking to move to a release candidate” Beltzner said in March, noting that the final release was “probably 2-3 months or so” away.
While the current version of Firefox is 3.0, Mozilla chose to skip ahead from the slated 3.1 edition and move straight to version 3.5 due to the large number of changes and new features in the forthcoming edition.
These include improved performance, especially when dealing with JavaScript and rendering content via the Gecko layout engine; a private browsing mode, in which the browser doesn’t store any cookies or leave your tracks in the history or cache; and support for multi-touch gestures such as pinching for zooming, swiping to step backwards and forwards and a ‘twist’ to switch tabs.
“The increase in version number is due to the sheer volume of work, which makes Shiretoko feel like much more than a small, incremental improvement over Firefox 3” Beltzner noted in a blog post about the change in version numbering.