Other Sites
Whenever we're asked "when is Firefox going to be released" we endeavor to answer to the best of our abilities, but the truth of the matter is that we'll only ever ship "when it's ready". We have a lot of indicators that help us understand when the product is ready for release: feedback from our pre-release milestones, excitement in the community and the press, availability of compatible Add-Ons, and a large active beta community helping us ensure that the release is compatible with all the various sites on the Internet.
After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 - the best web browser, period.
Of course, you really don't have to wait. Firefox posted version 3 Release Candidate 3 this week for download. I've been using it for the past several days, and among many other things I would have to say that it's the fastest browser I've ever used, at least on some sites such as the Applelinks news posting CGI. Indeed, the latest Firefox 3 preview builds have elicited a "Whoa; hold on to your hat - this baby is fast!" reaction.
The new interface on the Mac version is a massive improvement over Firefox 2 and previous versions. There are a raft of other new features, but I'll leave discussing most of them for a full review of the version 3 final.
You can download Firefox 3 RC 2 here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html
I found the update from version 2 (some time ago; I've been using Firefox 3 public betas and release candidates for several months now) completely painless, and there's no way I would go back to using version 2. The excellent resume session feature is reason enough to switch even if there weren't so may others.
Mozilla has declared June 17 "Download Day" and is shooting to have at least 1.6 million users download FIrefox 3 within 24 hours of its release thereby setting a new Guinness world record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours, and has set up a special Webpage where you can track their progress on an interactive world map and pledge your support for the record effort.
You can check it out at:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/
As of this morning, there had been 191,173 pledges registered from the U.S., 32,471 from Canada, and 1,159,004 total globally, so Firefox is well on its way to reaching the critical number if everyone follows through. As a Canuck, I'm pleased to note that we're more than pulling our weight, since Canada's population is about 10 percent of America's, so proportionately we're about one-third ahead of the U.S. in pledges.
Tags: Blogs ď Commentary ď Hot Topics ď
