...Aug 30th.
I've been following the Mozilla.dev group (Google group) on a daily basis and just so everyone knows, the beta 5 release has been moved up to above date. Just FYI.
Also, there's a ton of work going on for finalizing the code with a huge push scheduled for next week. Mozilla has done a major revamp to it's development process and it seems to be working quite a bit better than before. As a long time tester for new Thunderbird and Firefox versions, this new development process (which has actually been a work in progress for a couple of years now) is breath of fresh air and although one of the aspects of this new process has resulted in a significantly longer beta period, the overall result will be a much more stable and bug free browser once it's released.
And yes, releasing beta builds to the public for user testing is an excellent part of the development process as "testing in the lab" (so to speak) under controlled conditions by a limited amount of personnel simply is an entirely different thing when compared to "testing in the field" by thousands of end users who are savvy enough to find problems, do a bit of troubleshooting, check the forums and file bug reports. Both types of testing are vital of course, you can't just depend on one type.
Mozilla has also taken the extra step of allowing the less tech savvy users a chance to join in testing the up and coming Firefox 4 by adding the new "Feedback" system and regularly occurring "Test Pilot" studies that are currently built in to the Firefox 4 betas.
And, as has been already stated many times before, it's beta software which means that it's probably going to be buggy and unstable. If you're not comfortable with this and are not prepared to be a tester, don't install it.
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