I can’t quite remember that we have been so excited about any other bug list ever. Mozilla is getting very creative in keeping the focus on eliminating every single hard- blocking bug from the Firefox 4 code and has, to our knowledge, posted the first-ever bug countdown for a significant public software. Can we ship yet?
Mozilla's Bug Countdown at canweshipyet.com
‘No’ is the answer at the time of this writing. The count stands at 14, down from 15 earlier in the day and the same as yesterday. We have somewhat lost track of the actual bug count, as the bug trend chart indicates 18 hard- blocking bugs and beta bugs and 115 soft-blockers. Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler tweeted earlier today that only 7 bugs with “unwritten patches” are left. There is a notable push at Mozilla to get Firefox 4 out the door, but there seems to be no clear indication when that will be.
The RC release was most recently targeted for February and the final for March. We are currently waiting for Firefox 4 Beta 12, which was planned to be closed up last Friday, but apparently missed that date. Given the accelerating pace at Mozilla, Beta 12 could be released sometime later this week. However, Mozilla is not ruling out the possibility of a Beta 13. There seems to be additional concerns that have creeped up after the release of Beta 11. Can we ship yet? is an obvious motivational effort to conclude the development. The page itself is a continuation of previous pages such as Are we fast yet?, which tracked the progress and implementation of the JaegerMonkey JavaScript engine and Are we pretty yet? site that is focused on graphical elements of the browser interface – and recently revealed the first UI layouts of Firefox 5.
Besides the fact that the Firefox 4 beta phase is getting a bit long in the tooth, Mozilla is now facing the difficulty that the Firefox 4 release may collide or follow the release of IE9, which we expect to be announced on March 14. Following IE9 hands Microsoft the marketing advantage, and results in an interesting dynamic between the two companies as it seems that the two do not care much about any other browser in their battle of words. It will be interesting to see if and how Mozilla will answer Microsoft’s obvious performance gains in IE9 RC.
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