Firefox 4 queues up for March 22 release

Less than a week after releasing Firefox 4 Release Candidate, Mozilla is preparing to certify the build as golden. A decision will come today. If the RC passes, and there are no show-stopping bugs uncovered later, Mozilla plans to officially release on March 22nd, according to a forum post by Damon Sicore.

"Firefox 4 RC1 has received a very warm welcome; it's time to make a decision to ship,"Mozilla's Sicore writes. "As of now, there are no known issues that would stop us from shipping RC1 as final. At the conclusion of our regular 11:30 a.m. triage session on Wednesday, March 16th, release drivers will decide whether to ship RC1 as Firefox 4."

He adds: "March 22nd is the day we would ship. Both IT and Marketing have indicated that March 22nd is an acceptable final launch date. If at any time we discover issues that would block final release, we would issue an RC2 as soon as possible, reset the ship date, and communicate to everyone."

Firefox is the second-most popularly used browser, with 21.74 percent usage share in February, according to NetApplications. Internet Explorer is king, with 56.77 percent usage share. However, WebKit-based browsers are closing in. For example, combined, Apple's Safari and Google Chrome have 17.29 percent usage share.

Mozilla had expected to ship Firefox 4 last year, but encountered delays prepping this release. Next week's official launch, should it happen, would follow the release of new versions of several competing browsers -- all this month: Chrome 10, Internet Explorer 9 and Safari 5.04.

Last week I asked Betanews readers: "Which web browser do you use?" For many of you, it's Firefox. Christian Blackburn: "FireFox since 2.0, but currently 3.6.15. I'm also using Adblock Plus, FireFox Sync (or XMarks if a client needs to sync with a different browser), Autofill forms, and URL Fixer are also enjoyed."

"I just updated Firefox to the release candidate and so far so good," Robert Rauck commented on March 10th. "Firefox is my favorite at this point due to the high quality zoom and the available add-ons. I have tried Chrome and Opera and they both have good features but I don't like them as well over all."

Tom Thumb: "Firefox 4 is my primary browser, I like the ability to customize it to my preferences."

My pop quiz for readers today: Will you adopt Firefox 4? Will it be your primary browser? Are you moving from Firefox 3.x or switching from another primary browser? Please answer in comments, or email joewilcox at gmail dot com.