Firefox 4 Beta 8 is now slated for availability on December 7.

Beta 8 was tentatively scheduled for release Nov 30th but the team continues to fix blockers, nail down security holes and synchronization issues.

The open source browser team plans at least two more beta releases before making available a release candidate. Firefox 4 is not expected to be available until the first quarter of 2011.

"There is a pending change to the way Sync UI works for adding another client which needs to be simultaneously shipped with Fennec 2 beta 3," according to Mozilla meeting notes on Beta 8. "Based on the Fennec Beta 3 schedule, which is targeting Dec 7th as ship, we feel it's best to align beta 8 with that date."

The team reported today that crashes are down considerably.