Things are quite hectic at the moment at Mozilla's headquarters. Not only are they working on new releases of Firefox 3 (with version 3.6.12 released just today) but also on the next major milestone in the history of this web browser: Firefox 4.

However it seems that the schedule for the launch of this new version was too optimistic and had to be revised in order to adapt it to the actual amount of work. Development on Firefox 4 has not been slowed down, but completing all the tasks and solving all the bugs is taking longer than expected. And as Mozilla won't approve the release of its flagship before it's completely ready, the final release has been delayed until 2011.

Taking into account new time estimates and the pending work to get Firefox 4 ready for its final release, Mozilla developers have come up with a new beta and release candidate schedule that includes the release of frequent beta versions - up to four in the next few weeks - and a first release candidate in early 2011. The final release date, according to Mozilla, will be soon after that RC.