Firefox 2.0 alpha has not been released yet
Monday, March 20th, 2006
Many recent news articles claim that a Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha version (the development stage before beta) has been released. This is not the case. The confusion is derived from a recent version number change in the nightly development builds, which are publicly available but are only intended to be used by developers and pre-beta testers. The nightly build version numbers have changed in preparation for an upcoming alpha release, but Mozilla has not yet officially released it and there are still additional changes that are expected to be made beforehand.
Asa Dotzler, the leader of Mozilla’s Quality Assurance program, has responded to these false reports.
Update: It appears that the alpha development is currently frozen, meaning it will not receive any more changes until the official alpha release unless the quality assurance group deems it necessary. The alpha release will be called “Bon Echo” (previously planned as “Bon Ocho”) rather than “Firefox” in order to discourage the general public from using it. Bon Echo, like other Firefox developer releases, is named after a landmark, specifically Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada.
Update: Bon Echo alpha 1 has now been officially released. Again, this should only be of interest to Firefox developers and people who wish to actively take part in the beta testing and bug report process. This version should not be used for general web browsing, as there may be serious bugs that result in loss of data or crashes.