Firefox 4 Nearly Finished, Goes Gold on March 22
Firefox 4 Nearly Finished, Goes Gold on March 22
Posted 03/16/2011 at 7:26am
| by Paul Lilly
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Barring any last minute bug discoveries or anything else that would cause a delay, the final version of Mozilla's Firefox 4 browser should be ready to download on Tuesday, March 22nd. That's according to Mozilla's Damon Sicore, who posted a note on Firefox's official forum saying there's really no point in moving forward with another Release Candidate.
"Firefox 4 RC1 has received a very warm welcome; it's time to make a decision to ship," Sicore wrote. "As of now, there are no known issues that would stop us from shipping RC1 as final. At the conclusion of our regular 11:30 AM triage session on Wednesday, March 16th, release drivers will decide whether to ship RC1 as Firefox 4. March 22nd is the day we would ship."
Firefox 4's launch has been pushed back several times, which isn't all that unusual for Mozilla. However, the delayed release has allowed Microsoft to get a jump on the next-generation browser wars by launching Internet Explorer 9. Both IE9 and Firefox 4 are world's apart from their previous versions, both aesthetically and underneath the hood.
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Mighty BOB!
March 16, 2011 at 9:09pm
Time for the add-on update waiting game. I think I had to wait like 6 months when updating from 3 to 3.5 because of add-ons that took forever to get updated. Or maybe that was from 2 to 3.. or both.. it happens pretty much every time there is a big update to FF.
Albin
March 16, 2011 at 4:06pm
I'm running it on my main computer, short a few extensions - mainly miss Cooliris. But have been holding off installing on the netbook. On a single open tab FF4 seems to run around 200mb RAM while the old 3.6 uses about half that, and it makes a difference on a unit with only 1GB.
Pity, because the new edition loads and runs quicker and more reliably on a number of sites, so far without irritating failures to render sites, that send 3.6 to error pages. I was hoping for a substantial fix before release.
JohnP
March 16, 2011 at 11:46am
Huh? In the about box, all I see right now is Firefox 4 , not release candidate or beta. Heh, I thought this WAS the final version!
blackcat77
March 16, 2011 at 9:28am
None of the betas worked right for me but the RC is running perfectly. I just wish they'd update Fastestfox to work with it.
ChatterboxChuck
March 16, 2011 at 8:29am
I still don't like the fact that they took away my option to save the current tabs like when I close it due to some small issue on the PC and then have to open it and find all the tabs again. Although session recovery helps I would still rather have the option as i did before and tell it if I want to save it or not.
If I could figure out how to move all the add-on icons on Chrome from the top of the browser and have them on some kind of side bar like I do on Firefox with the All-in-one sidebar plugin I have and only keep the ones I want like the Google shortcuts addon I have for Firefox, I would probably switch over to Chrome as Firefox really does hog waaaay to much memory and I have many issues when it comes to closing it (it won't always close completely, stays on the task manager list) and it's sometimes very slow to start. I love all my add-ons and have found several of them on Chrome so I just might find myself switching. It's up to Mozilla.
ddimick
March 16, 2011 at 8:51am
One of your plugins is likely the problem, not Firefox. I get all the tabs back when I launch and I never have any problems shutting it down. I leave my system running for weeks at a time, including Firefox, and memory usage is stable.
Next time you have trouble shutting it down, check and see if plugin-container.exe is hung. If it is, an add-on is the problem. Alternatively, try a test using Firefox without any add-ons enabled.
deadsenator
March 16, 2011 at 2:43pm
FF uses tons of memory. Yes, the more plugins you use, the higher the risk of leaks, but my FF useage hovers between 700MB and 1.2GB of memory. This is on four different machines all with slightly different setups (but all have ABP). I regularly have 10-20 Firefox windows and many have 3-12 tabs open.
To be fair, Opera does the same thing. On my main machine, Opera uses 1.2GB and Firefox uses 1GB. Luckily it has plenty of RAM, but this still makes for sluggish response sometimes. On one of my laptops, FF uses 800MB and I only have 2GB RAM. Ug.
I really wish there was a memory setting for a browser to be capped at 25% RAM or something. Someone tell me there is....
MPC - Please lose the "Publish to Facebook" ticbox.
Scatter
March 16, 2011 at 6:06pm
Really? 700mb to 1 gig?
I'm running Firefox 3.6.15 with over a dozen addons installed and my Firefox is using 185k as I write this.
I haven't tried any of the 4.0 beta's yet however.
deadsenator
March 16, 2011 at 10:44pm
For me it has less to do with add-ons or plug-ins, but having 125 tabs open. Hey, I am a browser punisher. ;~D
MPC - Lose the "Publish to Facebook" ticbox.
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