Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Due Next Week

In a posting to the Mozilla developer site, the Foundation said that it was locking down all development of Firefox 1.5 as of midnight, Tuesday, Sept. 6 in anticipation of the Thursday, Sept. 8 release of Beta 1.

Other scheduled milestones for the next version of Firefox -- which will sport a software update mechanism, and "Fastback," a feature that caches previously visited pages in memory for faster display when clicking back and forward -- include a second beta in early October and a release candidate by Oct. 28. Release candidates are typically the last before a final version is published.

"This does mean that our schedule will be pushed out a bit further but the added testing and bugfixing [sic] will help to ensure that Firefox 1.5 is of the highest possible quality," said Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for Mozilla, in a blog entry Tuesday evening.

Firefox 1.5, once called Deer Park, and before that Firefox 1.1, has been delayed several times, most recently in late July when Mozilla said that the browser's new features had slowed development. At one point, Mozilla was shooting for a March 2005 release of the update.