Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 Release Expected Next Week

Mike Angelo -- 15 March 2001(c)

(Webmaster's Note: This story has been updated by our story Sneak Preview of Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 -- Release Expected This Week )

Look for a new Milestone release of the Mozilla browser suite, Mozilla 0.8.1, next week if all goes well. The March revision of the Mozilla Project Development Roadmap lists Mozilla 0.8.1 release for 19 March 2001 -- that's Monday, next week.

The Mozilla development tree was frozen yesterday right on the newly revised Roadmap schedule. Earlier this month, the Mozilla Organization added Milestone 0.8.1 as an additional release to its Mozilla Development Roadmap and release schedule.

Milestone 0.8.1 was added in between the recent 0.8 release and the upcoming 0.9 Milestone. It replaces and pushes-back the Mozilla 0.9 release date in the Roadmap schedule. That in turn pushes back the Mozilla 1.0 release date.

Table 1 shows the March Roadmap revision. For more information about the Roadmap revisions, please see Mozilla 1.0 Release Pushed Back -- Milestone 0.8.1 Inserted into Development Roadmap Schedule.

Table 1. Mozilla Development Roadmap Milestone Schedule March 2001 Revision
Milestone	Start	Freeze	Branch	Release
Mozilla 0.8	3-Jan-2001	7-Feb-2001	9-Feb-2001	12-Feb-2001
Mozilla 0.8.1	9-Feb-2001	14-Mar-2001	16-Mar-2001	19-Mar-2001
Mozilla 0.9	16-Mar-2001	18-Apr-2001	20-Apr-2001	23-Apr-2001
Mozilla 0.9.1 (or 1.0?)	20-Apr-2001	23-May-2001	25-May-2001	28-May-2001

Traditionally, the milestone freeze time is 12 A.M. on a Wednesday. During the freeze, only bugs deemed "must-fix-for-this-milestone", typically last minute regressions, are fixed on the trunk, as everyone tries to qualify the daily builds as branch-worthy. Release staff@mozilla.org create the milestone branch, which receives even more intensive QA over the weekend, leading to a release the following Monday. (Mozilla Development Roadmap)

The new Netscape 6 browser suite and the upcoming NeoPlanet browser are based upon the cross-platform Mozilla browser-suite.

"The milestones are intended to be periodic check points for progress on the project, stability of builds, porting status, and are entry points for additional mozilla (sic) contributors to provide testing and engineering help on the project." (Project Sea Monkey)

Nevertheless, pre-Mozilla-1.0 development builds now are pretty much features-complete, stable, and usable. Mozilla development work now is focused on bug squashing, improved stability, and better performance.

We have been using the Mozilla Milestone 0.8 release as a primary browser. It is very stable and usable for us insofar as Web surfing is concerned. We also find it to be better, browser-wise, than Netscape 6.0. The Composer module is starting to get usable also.

If you have not yet tried the Mozilla browser suite you can download and try the Mozilla Milestone 0.8 release for now. Check the MozillaQuest Magazine front page (mozillaquest.com) to find out when Milestone 0.8.1 is released.

For more information about Mozilla 0.8 plus download links and instructions please see our articles, The Lizard Marches On: Mozilla Milestone 0.8 Browser-Suite Released and Mozilla Milestone 0.8 Browser-Suite RPM Builds Released.

For more information about the free HTML editor included with the Mozilla browser suite, please see, Composer: The Netscape & Mozilla Graphical HTML Editor & Word Processor.