Mozilla Firebird will be one of the most critical delivery vehicles for Gecko technology in the coming months. In order to get the best return on the years of effort that has gone into creating the platform upon which our software is built, exacting standards of quality and performance must be met. Our target for our 1.0 release is "best of breed" browser product on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X and before we can make that claim, a number of things need to be done. These tasks will be broken into the milestones that remain between now and 1.0.
This is, as always, subject to change.
| Milestone | Release Date | Bugs | Summary |
| 0.1 - Pescadero | September 23, 2002 | Bugs | Initial release introducing customizable toolbars, simple new interface, performance and size improvements, and lots of destruction. |
| 0.2 - Santa Cruz | October 1, 2002 | Bugs | Improvements to toolbar customization, inline web form autocomplete, sidebar, extensions management, making preferences work (somewhat), more size improvements and bug fixing. |
| 0.3 - Lucia | October 14, 2002 | Bugs | A few more features, global Go menu, improvements to pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing improvements, redesign of bookmark groups, more speed and size improvements and lots of bug fixing. |
| 0.4 - Oceano | October 21, 2002 | Bugs | Shifting from features to bug fixing and polish. Plans to leverage the Mozilla 1.2 stability push to make Phoenix rock solid. |
| 0.5 - Naples | December 7, 2002 | Bugs | Polish and cleanup. Lots of bug fixing. |
| 0.6 - Glendale | May 16, 2003 | Bugs | Redesigned Options window, new default theme, smooth scrolling, automatic image resizing, and much more. |
| 0.6.1 - Glendale | July 28, 2003 | Bugs | Security and other critical fixes, middle mouse button pan scrolling, a few other fixes picked up off the trunk. |
| 0.7 - Indio | October 14, 2003 | Bugs | Updated helper applications management, automatic downloading, plugin control, bookmark panels, theme updates and numerous bug fixes. |
| 0.8 - Blythe | ??? Dec/Jan, 2003 | Bugs | Download System Upgrade, Part II (ben), XPInstall UI Upgrade (ben), Windows Installer (ben) |
| 0.9 - New Hope | ???, 2004 | Bugs | ("The Dialog Release") Security UI (bryner/ben), Default Extension Bundles (ben, et al.), Linux Installer, Mail Integration UI, Profile Manager UI, Search Bar UI, Find in Page Dialog UI, Page Info Dialog UI, Add Bookmark Dialog UI, Bookmark Manager UI, Font Options UI |
| 0.10 - | ???, 2004 | Bugs | Extension Update UI, SmartUpdate, Help System engine. |
| 0.11 - | ???, 2004 | Bugs | Help System Documentation Finishing Touches, First Run, Throbber and Home Pages, Localize FE, Awkward UI Text Review, Seamless Data and Profile Migration, Bundled Extension Review |
| 0.12 (Mac only) | ???, 2004 | Bugs | Aquafication release. Focus on outstanding UI issues particular to MacOS X, redevelop UI to support cross platform nature, etc. MacOS X Installer. |
| 1.0 - Phoenix | ??? (mid?), 2004 | Bugs | Shake'N'Bake |
Additional required work has necessitated the insertion of two new releases for Windows, Linux and MacOS X (0.10 and 0.11) and one for MacOS X (0.12). The decision has been made to hold the 1.0 release on MacOS X until after 0.12 has been completed, basically ensuring that we do not ship a product that is not up to spec for that platform.
As outlined in the Mozilla project roadmap, the Mozilla Firebird browser will eventually replace the Seamonkey browser as the premiere end-user browser from mozilla.org. As part of the journey towards that goal, from milestone 0.7 onward Firebird 0.x releases will occur at the same time (or approximately the same time). A branch will be made for each Firebird milestone and stability updates (0.x.x releases) will be made from these branches.
As we predict more work required for a 1.0 moniker than remaining milestones left, after Firebird 0.9 we will continue numbering in the 0.10, 0.11, 0.12... style. This prevents us from overloading the 0.x.x numbering system, leaving it for incremental updates based on 0.x branches.
With client products now among the most important delivery vehicles for Gecko technology, we will be building up an aggressive campaign to market the Firebird browser. The why document was a successful start to our marketing efforts. A number of other initiatives including a new product site will be rolled out over the coming milestones.
Mozilla Firebird has a tremendous community following, and we wish to highlight the following two sites - Mozilla Firebird Help for a wide selection of Firebird extensions, themes, and other helpful information; and MozillaZine Forums - our premier discussion site for users and developers.