The Firefox 3/Gecko 1.9 development team has decided there needs to be a Beta 5 release of Firefox 3.
…based on the number of blockers remaining. This additional beta will ensure that changes which may affect website compatibility and changes which affect the user experience will get exposure to a wider audience for feedback and regression testing.
The string freeze is expect this Friday, March 7th with a code freeze on March 18th. They say Beta 5 will be the last milestone for string changes. No word as of yet on a release date for Beta 5, especially given Beta 4 hasn’t even been released yet.
Source: Mozilla Developer News
Fx Extension Guru's Blog
I don’t get why developers don’t go past the Beta tag.
Why it isn’t a gamma, zeta o whatever-greek-letter version?
If you’re doing 5 betas then you might as well go with 9 alfas, what’s the difference in this point?
The release version should be called gamma or delta or something forward.
wat zett haaaaaaa?
Well, alpha builds are not recommended /at all/ for non-developers, as they are highly unstable and are usually just a core development. The first beta is usually closed to a more-concentrated sample group who usually exploit the browser as much as they can and report what they find.
The public / open beta releases are test releases where they let anyone use the browser to expose it to as many environments as possible. Beta builds are almost stable builds (75~100% complete.)
They release the product if the previous beta displays no flaws and call it a “final build”.