Firefox/4/Beta
From MozillaWiki
The Firefox 4 Beta aims to engage 1M-4M users in an interactive process through which frequent updates are evaluated by a representative set of web users and their feedback shapes the direction of future development updates.
We will collect feedback through a variety of in-product and out-of-product mechanisms, and communicate the goals of each beta revision to users as it is delivered to them.
Goals
- more than 2M users running Firefox 4 Beta prior to launch
- engaged beta audience submitting tweet-like feedback through product
- beta audience that matches our general user audience demographics
- frequent milestones to gather feedback throughout development cycle
You can also read about the background for this program.
Milestones
| Milestone | Expected | Actual | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Branch | In time for b5 | Expected after release | Stabilize mozilla-central and create a mozilla-2.0 branch for Firefox 4 |
| Ship Beta r1 | Thursday, June 24 | July 6 (+12 days) | Ship first revision of beta |
| Ship Beta r2 | Friday, July 23 | Tuesday, July 27 (+4 days) | Ship second revision of beta |
| Ship Beta r3 | Friday, August 6 | Wednesday, August 11 (+5 days) | Ship third revision of beta |
| Ship Beta r4 | Friday, August 20 | Tuesday, August 24 (+4 days) | Ship fourth revision of beta, offer as major upgrade to branch beta channel users |
| Ship Beta r5 | Friday, Sept 3 | Tuesday, September 7 (+4 days) | Ship fifth revision of beta. (Feature and string freeze was moved to beta 7) |
| Ship Beta r6 | n/a | Tuesday, September 14 | Extra beta inserted. Only included 2 fixes for regressions. |
| Ship Beta r7 | Friday, September 17 | Wednesday, November 10 (+54 days) | This will be the feature/string/API freeze milestone (was originally the last Firefox 4 Beta) |
| API & Feature Freeze | b7 code freeze (formerly b5) | Beta 7 | Finalize all interfaces, no more API changes on mozilla 2.0, no new feature work |
| String Freeze | b7 code freeze (formerly b5) | Beta 7 | Finalize all string work, no semantic changes to strings |
| Ship Beta r8 | November 30 (tentative) | Wednesday, December 22 (+22 days) | Ship eighth revision of beta |
| Ship Beta r9 | December 16 (tentative) | Friday, January 14 (+28 days) | Ship ninth revision of beta |
| Ship Beta r10 | Expected asap in the week of January 24 | Tuesday, January 25 | Ship tenth revision of beta |
| Ship Beta r11 | Asap in the week of January 31 | Tuesday, February 8 (+1 week) | Ship eleventh revision of beta, with more betaN+ hardblockers fixed (14 betaN+ hardblockers not fixed) |
| Ship Beta r12 | Beta 12 will not have a fixed schedule and will instead be built when the remaining betaN hardblockers are at zero | Friday, February 25 | Ship twelfth revision of beta, with all betaN+ hardblockers fixed |
| Ship Release Candidate 1 | early 2011, TBD March 2011 | Wednesday, March 9 | Complete work on all blocking2.0:final+ bugs, generate release candidates |
| Ship Release Candidate 2 | March 18 | Saturday, March 19, (+1 day) | Two very small, very isolated fixes in order to better protect Firefox 4 users. |
| Ship Final Version | March 22 | Tuesday, March 22 | Final version of Firefox 4 |
