Barring more bugs, Firefox Beta 2 will release Thursday, Mozilla Corp. developers reported after a weekly status meeting held Tuesday.

"[We are] on target to release Thursday, Aug. 31st assuming no stop-ship items [are] discovered," the meeting's online minutes read.

Beta 2 has been delayed several times to give developers more time to quash bugs in the browser.

Mozilla also said that users running earlier previews of Firefox 2.0 -- including any of the three alpha editions as well as Beta 1 -- will be automatically updated to Beta 2, using the software's built-in update mechanism. Previously, users had to download the full installation package to refresh their browsers.

Microsoft, meanwhile, released the next version of its Internet Explorer 7 browser -- Release Candidate 1 (RC1) -- last week. Both Microsoft and Mozilla have said that their applications will release in final form before the end of the year.