Mozilla developers are pushing hard to bring the final release candidate of Firefox 4 to market by the end of next month. The organization unleashed the ninth beta to testers on Friday, just three weeks after the prior beta. By contrast, the previous beta update round took six weeks.
Due to competitive pressures from Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 9 release and Google’s steady stream of Chrome browser updates, it appears that Mozilla intends to finish work on Firefox 4 swiftly to keep from losing more ground in the global market.
“We have to reach release candidate status as quickly as possible,” wrote Mozilla Senior Director of Platform Engineering Damon Sicore in a letter to developers last week.
Marketplace Pressures
According to Net Applications, IE held 57 percent of the global browser market at the end of 2010, followed by Firefox with 22.8 percent. Chrome ranked third with 9.98 percent, followed by Apple’s Safari with 5.89 percent.
Though Firefox has long been IE’s principal rival, growth for Mozilla’s browser stalled last year, noted Net Applications Executive Vice President Vince Vizzaccaro.
“If you look at the long-term trends with browsers, IE lost almost eight percent of usage share in 2008, most of which went to Firefox,” Vizzaccaro said. “IE lost about seven percent in 2009, with gains shared between Firefox, Chrome and Safari, and IE lost about five percent usage share in 2010, while Firefox also declined and Chrome and Safari made gains.”
With developers pushing hard to release the final version of Firefox 4 in February, Vizzaccaro believes Mozilla has reason to be concerned that most browser users converting from IE are now adopting Chrome. Moreover, IE9 will not only feature several major improvements over IE8, but also be much faster, he noted.
“I have been using IE9 beta, and I…