Mozilla Changes Firefox Release Schedule To Test New Proton Interface

Mozilla Extends Firefox 89 Beta Cycle to Give Developers More Time to Test Proton's New User Interface.

The FX Trains website reports that the release of Firefox 89 is being pushed back from May 18 to June 1, 2021. This change was noticed by German blogger Soren Hentzschel. He suggested that the delay was deliberately introduced to give Mozilla more time to test Proton's new user interface.

Due to the temporary transition to the six-week beta testing cycle for Firefox 89, the Firefox 90 Nightly cycle will also be extended to 6 weeks, and then the branch will return to the normal 4-week cycle. Firefox 88 will be the last version of Firefox released under the old release schedule - April 20, 2021. All subsequent releases will be delayed by two weeks from their original launch dates.

Firefox 89 is currently being tested on the Nightly branch. Users can download a build of Firefox Nightly now to test the new Proton user interface. The design update will bring changes to many elements of the browser interface, including tabs, main menu, context menus, and modals. You can familiarize yourself with the new features of Proton in our separate article at this link.

It will be interesting to see how Mozilla takes advantage of the additional two weeks of beta testing. In the meantime, Reddit users have already started complaining about the new Proton interface. They are frustrated that the tabs are taking up too much space and there are no visual dividers between them.