Jessica Lyons was planning on releasing a new version toward the end of March. But, some of the things the Lab is releasing, she wants to get in this coming viewer release. The only way to do that is to delay the release. So, expect the release to slide back 2 to 4 weeks, mid to end of April.
Oz Linden says the viewer side of Hover and Experience Tools are viewer side stable. So, the FS Team could start building those into FS. They have been holding off, busy with other stuff too, waiting for these to finalize. Oz is saying they pretty much have stabilized and the hold up is on the server side.
Jessica also says the current build is not passing FS’s internal QA. So, waiting for the new features is not the sole reason for delaying release. But, getting these feature in will be nice and bring FS much closer to full parity with the SL Viewer… and there are way more features in FS than SL Viewer, so don’t be mislead by my use of ‘parity’. I just mean they will almost have all the features now in the SL Viewer… plus a boat load of their own.
Also, Jessica says the next release of FS will not block the XP-Vista users (about 50k combined users). But the one after will. So, get ready. You’ll be able to use the next release for about 12 months, may be a bit more, as that is how long it will take the team to get 3 next versions out. When the 3rd version past this one rolls out, this version, which will then be the 4th version, will be blocked so only the 3 latest versions are in use. Basic Firestorm policy.