Mozzila Firefox 4 RC is available for download

Software developer Mozilla has announced that its Firefox 4 web browser has finally made it out of beta and is now available as a release candidate.

Mozilla released 12 betas of Firefox 4 before reaching the release candidate stage and says that those who are currently on the beta release will be automatically updated to the release candidate, which is available in 70 languages. Those who update will be “validating the new features, enhanced performance and stability and HTML5 capabilities in Firefox 4”, says Mozilla.

Facing stiff competition from Apple, Google and Microsoft, Mozilla has steadily improved the performance of Firefox 4 through its many beta releases. It claims further improvements in the release candidate performance in Kraken, Sunspider and V8 benchmarks, though it hasn’t placed its browser side by side against its rivals.

Mozilla expects this final testing phase to iron out any remaining bugs in Firefox 4. The web browser has matured nicely through its prolonged beta period and Mozilla anticipates that it won’t take much time to move from release candidate to final release. The production release of Firefox 4 will pave the way for relatively quick progression to several more future versions of Firefox.

The development of Firefox 4 was protracted and took years. Mozilla has revealed that it plans to shorten its release cycles. It has even suggested that it might be able to release Firefox 5, 6 and 7 by the end of this year.

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Source: The Inquirer