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23:17, 13 May 2013 Mozilla provides development builds of Firefox in the following channels: Beta, Aurora, and Nightly. As of March 2013, Firefox 20 beta is in the Beta channel, Firefox 21 alpha is in the Aurora channel, and Firefox 22 pre-alpha is in the Nightly channel.
A release is a specific version of the application, and will have a number associated with it such as 20.0 or 20.0.1. A build narrows down that release even more; you can see specific build information in about:buildconfig. Releases that have been under development go "up" a channel about every six weeks, usually released the day after the code is merged. So the channel is like a slot that is filled every 6 weeks with a new version of the software that has been intensively tested.
See also:
Releases: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases (merge dates)
Releases: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Flight_Tracking
Rapid Release calendar: https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar
Nightly release page: http://nightly.mozilla.org/
Nightly first run page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/nightly/firstrun/
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles Managing multiple profiles] is very useful if you want to run the release version of Firefox and a Nightly, Aurora, or Beta build, easily, at the same time.