Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Delayed Until October

As Internet Explorer 7 ushers in some surprising positive reviews for industry giant Microsoft, Mozilla has announced that its Firefox 2.0 browser will be delayed until at least mid-October. The re-scheduling of Firefox 2.0 means that Mozilla's new web crawler won't be ready this month, greatly disappointing a growing fan base.

Mozilla: Growing in Popularity

Once an underground cult favorite for its security features that, for the most part, improved on many Microsoft faults, Mozilla's Firefox browser is constantly growing in popularity.

In total, most sources estimate that Firefox now represents 15 percent of browser use in the United States, with rumors that usage in Europe being even greater. (Source: betanews.com)

The delay means that only the second beta of Firefox 2.0 will be available this month, despite recent claims by Mozilla that the full version would be available sometime during August. Instead, most Firefox fans will have to wait for 2.0 until shortly before Halloween, giving Microsoft the opportunity to soak up some of the market it has lost in the past year or so.

As for the recently released IE7, critics are, in general, impressed with the new browser from Microsoft. At the recent Black Hat Briefings -- a conference exclusively designed to discuss security issues in software -- the Redmond-based company received far more glowing reviews from the industry's toughest critics than ever predicted.

Although Microsoft was forced to admit that the final product did ship with some patchable flaws, IE7 has been heralded as a general improvement over the first version of Firefox. (Source: news.com)

It remains to be seen what effect the delay will have on the release success of Firefox 2.0, but it's probably safe to assume that many fervent followers of Mozilla will continue to wait for a browser that includes spell-check, anti-phishing, improved RSS feeds, and other additions.