Firefox RC1 released
Posted in News by admin on May 19th, 2008 Mozilla Corp. has brought out the release candidate for Firefox 3.0, bringing the open-source browser one step closer to its first major overhaul in almost 19 months.
No-one expected Firefox release candidate 1 (RC!) came earlier than expected with even Mozilla’s chief engineer saying just last week that they would publicly launch the build in “late May.”
Firefox RC1 is available now for download from Mozilla’s servers, and is being offered as an update to users running the Beta 5 version of the browser – the final beta edition that was released six weeks ago.
Mozilla’s interface designer made users aware that, “The Firefox 3 Release Candidate is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback.”
Beltzner touted user interface changes, stability and compatibility fixes, and additional performance improvements made to RC1 since the last beta – mentioning that some add-ons may not work with the candidate.
Although Mozilla has run through multiple release candidates in the past — three before moving on to final for Firefox 2.0 in late 2006 — Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering, said a week ago that RC1 might be the sole build prior to calling the browser done.
Schroepfer has said several times that Firefox 3 will ship in June.
Firefox currently accounts for about 17.7% of the browser market, according to the most recent data from Net Applications Inc. Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer remains the most wide-used browser, with a 74.8% share, while Apple Inc.’s Safari comes in third with 5.8%.
Firefox 3 RC1 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 41 languages from Mozilla’s site.
