Just a few short days after delivering the first Release Candidate build of Firefox 4, Mozilla senior director of engineering Damon Sicore has confirmed that the final build of the browser will be ready to launch before the month is out.

The browser's public release has been pencilled in for a March 22 launch.

Posting in a Mozilla Development discussion on Google Groups, Sicore commented on the positive reception that met the first release candidate, adding that now was the "time to make a decision to ship".

Sicore went on to add that both Mozilla's "IT and marketing [departments] have indicated that March 22 is an acceptable final launch date".

But the March 22 date could well change if developers currently testing the release candidate come across any major issues or serious bugs, as detailed by Sicore: "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 4 introduces several changes, including tabs now being placed above the address bar, mutli-touch support, a new add-ons manager, improved HTML 5 support and more. Unlike the recently released Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4 will work on Windows XP.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.c ... ID=3265554

Why would you want tabs above the address bar? Or have I misunderstood?

That always confuses me when I'm using someone's Chrome. I guess you get used to it, and it does make slightly more sense. After all, the address is part of the child window and shouldn't really be displayed "outside".

I generally open links in new tabs directly and only use the address bar if only the url is provided, so for me I would prefer the address bar to stay above tabs. I understand what you mean JJ but I'm looking at it from an ease of use manner.

I always 'middle-click' links anyway or use the keyboard shortcut for a new tab, so...

I like tabs at the bottom of everything else. It means having to move the mouse less.