Firefox 4: Not Going to See the Light of Day in 2010

I still haven’t made up my mind whether I should use Safari as my main browser. I have been using Firefox for the longest time, but Safari does have its advantages. I guess old habits die hard! In any case, I just might be making the switch before the end of the year if things continue the way are going with the release of the new Firefox.

Earlier this year, Mozilla got Firefox enthusiasts all excited about the news that Firefox 4 should be out by October or November 2010. Unfortunately, the most recent announcement has pegged the release of the latest version of the popular browser to 2011. The news does not come as a surprise to many. The beta version has been released, but it seems that glitches regarding stability are being encountered, hence the delay.

Late last week, Mike Beltzner posted the announcement:

Development on Firefox 4 has not slowed down and strong progress is being made daily. However, based on the delays in completing the “feature complete” Beta 7 milestone against which our Add-on developers and third-party software developers can develop, as well as considering the amount of work remaining to prepare Firefox 4 for final release, we have revised our beta and release candidate schedule: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4/Beta

The frequent beta releases have been extremely helpful in identifying compatibility issues with existing web content, so we plan on continuing to release beta milestones through the end of December. Our estimate is now that release candidate builds will ship in early 2011, with a final release date close behind. Please note that, as always, this schedule is subject to change based on feedback from users and community members.

So should I switch to Safari and forget about Firefox?