Firefox 3.6 Final Coming Right Up

While the development of the next iteration of Firefox hasn’t really dragged for too long, with the previous version released in mid-2009, fact is that the initial availability deadline was missed by a couple of months. Still, the wait is nearly over, and the final development milestone of Firefox 3.6, codenamed Namoroka, is now on the horizon, just a few weeks away. Mozilla has of course made available for download the first Release Candidate for Firefox 3.6 at the end of the past week, and in this regard is yet to announce the general availability deadline of the final release.

The RC label is a clear indication that Mozilla is on the last stretch with the development process of Firefox 3.6. In fact, on the page housing the Firefox 3.6RC1 Test Plan, Mozilla notes, “This is the first release candidate for Firefox 3.6. Should everything run smoothly during testing this is what will be released to our users as the official version after a beta period.”

What this means is that, provided no show-stopping bugs (blockers, regression issues) are identified with the first RC Build of Firefox 3.6, Mozilla will move straight to offering the final version of the open source browser to the public. The promise is that Firefox 3.6 Final will be offered for download by the end of January 2010, and with the RC already available, Mozilla might just deliver. However, the possibility of a further delay cannot be ruled out, especially with various development milestones getting postponing repeatedly. For example, Firefox 3.6 RC was initially planned for launch in October 2009, with the final release set for November.

However, in the second half of December 2009, Mozilla only managed to ship the fifth and final Beta Build of Firefox 3.6. Still, ruling out potential blockers, Mozilla is likely to deliver Firefox 3.6 Final anywhere between one and two weeks after the RC shipps.

With Firefox 3.6 RC users will be able to customize the browser’s appearance via Personas, to seamlessly update plug-ins, and to enjoy a more stable browser that no longer allows third-party software to hook into its core. Firefox 3.6 allows open, native video to be displayed full screen, and comes with support for the WOFF font format, the HTML5 File API, and new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Firefox 3.6 RC1 (Release Candidate) for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 RC1 (Release Candidate) for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 RC1 (Release Candidate) for Linux is available for download here.

Win7User512 said:

Looking forward to it. I wish they could speed up the startup time. Seems pretty slow for me.

Yeah, startup time for FF is slow here too. I've been using the Chrome dev build, but it crashes to often.

Honestly, I don't think we'll ever see startup times improve in FF, mostly because a lot of the extensions are pretty poorly written. I'm using extensions in Chrome, and startup there is almost instantaneous. It seems FF just doesn't care about the startup time issue.

Sounds good - thanks for the info. I use FF almost exclusively, so this is good news.