Firefox 3.5 ‘Preview’ Paves the Way for Final Release
Mozilla has released what the company is calling Firefox 3.5 Preview, an “almost there” version of its next web browser, which is due in about a month.
Firefox 3.5 is not at the release candidate stage just yet, but the announcement does say that the Preview update is “considered stable for daily browsing use.” This release is a recommended update for those of you already using Firefox 3.5b4. The update fixes a number of stability bugs, some JavaScript issues and offers improvements to the browser’s built in Ogg-based video and audio playback capabilities.
If you’re already using Firefox 3.5b4, the Preview update should arrive automatically within the next 24 hours. If you’d like to start testing it immediately, head to the “Help” Menu and select “Check for Updates.”
It’s been about a year since the arrival of Firefox 3, the web’s second-most-popular browser behind Microsoft Internet Explorer. That’s a long wait in “internet time,” so the next version of the open-source browser is widely anticipated. When the final release of Firefox 3.5 arrives, it will bring with it a host of new features, including much faster page rendering and JavaScript engines as well as expanded support for HTML 5, CSS 3 and the latest emerging web standards being used to power browser-based apps like Gmail, mapping services and online productivity tools. There are also smaller changes like an updated user interface, better crash protection and new privacy controls, all of which will bring Mozilla’s browser up to speed with more current releases like Apple’s Safari 4 and Google’s Chrome.
The Mozilla announcement also says that the release candidate — the final stop before Firefox 3.5 is officially released into the wild — will arrive in the next 1-2 weeks. Given that there’s generally a week or two of last minute testing and bug fixes after the release candidate, we put the final release of Firefox 3.5 in the first week of July 2009.
If you’d like more information about Firefox 3.5 and what’s new, check out our links to previous coverage, listed below, or subscribe to Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard’s blog. Blizzard will be spending the next 35 days covering all of Firefox 3.5’s new features, with two posts a day, every day.
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