Mozilla Delays Firefox 1.5 RC1 To Stamp Out Late Bugs

Firefox 1.5, which is currently in its second beta version, was going to move on to the next step, Release Candidate 1, on Friday, Oct. 28. A code lockdown -- which meant that no new changes for RC1 would be accepted -- was scheduled for midnight Sunday, Oct. 23.

"We didn't quite make it and this morning there were a couple of regressions, a couple of newly discovered security issues, and a couple of unfixed Update bugs," blogged Asa Dotzler, the coordinator of Mozilla&'s QA program, on Monday.

By Monday night, only one or two security flaws needed attention, Dotzler said, but the delay meant that RC1 probably won't be ready by Friday.

Firefox 1.5, the first major upgrade since the open-source browser debuts in November 2004, will feature an auto updating mechanism, faster browsing, and new privacy controls.