The Mozilla Foundation will hold off releasing the next revision of its
popular open-source browser Firefox until late September.
The announcement, made by developer Ben Goodger on the Mozilla Web site,
is likely a stalling tactic to shore up recent security difficulties in the
browser. Firefox 1.1 had been scheduled for release this month.
“Nothing is scrapped, this is just a version number realignment,” Goodger
wrote on his blog. Citing a number of significant upgrades, including Gecko
features, such as SVG and Canvas, as well as many application functional
enhancements, Goodger said the latest felt more like a 1.5 to everyone than
a 1.1.
Earlier this month, officials at the foundation were forced
to update 12 security issues discovered in the Firefox code, as well as
stability fixes to the browser.
It was the first update since May, when the organization fixed three
critical bugs to the Mozilla Update Web service. Firefox 1.0.4 was
rushed out the door days after two of the flaws were published by an outfit
called the Greyhats Security Group.
“So we’ve decided to re-brand the release Firefox 1.5, and once that is
released (we’re not pushing it out to accommodate more big features that
weren’t on the 1.1 plan) focus our efforts on a compelling 2.0.
Goodger said the foundation is planning to release a beta version of
Firefox 1.5 in August, although as the roadmap points out, the dates are
tentative and serve only to give an idea of the relative position of one
release from another.
