Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 hits the web

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 18 May 2008 20:36

Opinion and Analysis

The full version of Firefox 3 is due in June, but Firefox 3 in beta status is no more, having been issued as Release Candidate 1 for some near final testing before the full version is unleashed onto a Firefox loving web wide world!

Months before the final version of Internet Explorer 8 is due, Mozilla are but a few short weeks away from officially releasing their next browser version.

Although the beta versions of Firefox 3 have been strictly classed as “for testing purposes only”, I’ve personally been using Firefox 3 since beta 3 stage, and have rarely encountered any issues.

Anyone who has already been using Firefox 3 beta 5 (and presumably earlier versions) would have very recently received notification that the release candidate was due: I simply had a notification that there was an update, and when I clicked yes to install it, the next time Firefox 3 loaded, it was the new release candidate version.

Mozilla say it’s a “public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback” which includes “new features as well as dramatic improvements to performance, memory usage and speed”.

Running the new version seems snappier than ever, but as always, Mozilla say they “recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this release.”

According to the Mozilla Developer Center, “this milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.”

The specific new features and changes in this milestone listed at the centre include:

- Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.

- Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.

- Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability.

- Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.

Please read onto page 2 for more information, and the link to download Firefox 3 RC1.