Firefox Beta is the build for those who like a little bit of jeopardy, but who don’t want to risk everything by trying out Firefox Aurora, the early alpha build of Firefox. Firefox Beta gives you a sneak peek at the next version of Firefox six weeks ahead of its final release, offering a relatively stable build that’s not quite ready for primetime, but still pretty solid.
Whereas Firefox Aurora installs as a completely separate application alongside your existing Firefox installation, Firebox Beta will replace the stable build. Should you subsequently wish to go back to the safer version, you’ll need to manually download the stable version and install it over the top of the beta build.
Confirm which build you have by selecting About Firefox from the Firefox menu or button (it’s inside the Help menu if using the Firefox button).
Firefox 17 is now in the Beta channel.
There are three primary features mooted for version 17, but as of the first beta release, none were visible and so may yet slip. These include “Firefox Social Integration”, with toolbar icons, a dedicated sidebar and potentially dockable or floating window providing various social-friendly features such as notifications, chat tools and buddy lists.
Also promised are continuing improvements of Location Bar auto-complete results. Some have already been implemented in version 16, but others have yet to make an appearance, including the promise of larger icons, the ability to delete search results by hovering the mouse over them and the removal of the scrollbar.
The final improvement is the potential addition of extra editing tools to the HTML portion of the Page Inspector.
To keep an eye on what's planned in Firefox 17 and whether or not the features have landed yet, check the Features/Release Tracking page.