When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

Now I’m a huge Firefox fan, but I’m not into beta anything for software and 2.0, also known as chrome, is still a bit green for me, I much preferred version 1.5. That being said, I was even more taken back by the mention of

Firefox 3.0 will also contain elements for its 4.0 release and beyond

They are still defining what all 3.0 will do, why is there any talk of version 4.0? What is currently missing from version 2.0 that is so needed in a whole new release of the browser that a version 2.1 can’t handle? Sometimes software engineers need to learn to leave good enough alone.