Firefox 3.5 RC: Release Delayed, New Friday Test Day
If you we’re still hoping to get to play with Firefox 3.5 RC1 (Release Candidate 1) this week, or perhaps during the weekend, we have bad news for you. It seems that the Firefox development team at Mozilla has not been able to work out all the bugs out of the system; there are 10 final blockers to take care off, but nothing too significant. The RC will be rolled out sometime next week.
Previously, Firefox Director, Mike Beltzner, announced that the code freeze of Firefox 3.5 RC1 will occur on the 20th of May, the next day any issues with nightly builds will be addressed, and on May 22 to 24, the RC build will be produced. At the time Mike Beltzner said that Firefox 3.5 RC1 would be made available for download in the first week of June.
Last week’s Friday Test Day will be held again, since the RC of Firefox 3.5 was not delivered at the time. Mozilla QA, Aakash Desai, explains: “I'm here to inform that we're going to be holding another Fx3.5 RC1 Testday event on Friday, June 5th, from 7AM - 5PM PDT! It'll be a concentrated mozQA Community day committed to testing Firefox 3.5 RC 1. This time around we should have the real builds out this Friday. So, if you're interested in the new browser or want to help improve its quality, come join us in the #testday channel! Anyone that finds a *new* blocker bug or is our "toptester" (runs the highest amount of litmus testcases) for the day will be rewarded with a really cool MozQA shirt.”
Additional details on the event can be found on the official Mozilla QA web page – click here.
The latest nightly build of Firefox 3.5 RC is available for download here.
Until the Release Candidate is rolled out, the only Firefox 3.5 offering you can play with is Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 (download here). It comes with the following features:
- Support for 70 languages.
- Improved Private Browsing Mode.
- Enhanced stability and performance provided by the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
- Native support for JSON.
- Native support for web worker threads.
- Web standards are used for geolocation (Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 can thus provide Location Aware Browsing).
- Support for new web technologies.
- The option to restore closed Firefox windows, not just closed tabs.
Or you could think of something you can do very fast, make a 30 second video and upload it to the Fastest Firefox web page. Why would you want to do such a thing? Simply because Mozilla wants your to help in telling the world just how fast Firefox 3.5 really is (details here).
Previously, Firefox Director, Mike Beltzner, announced that the code freeze of Firefox 3.5 RC1 will occur on the 20th of May, the next day any issues with nightly builds will be addressed, and on May 22 to 24, the RC build will be produced. At the time Mike Beltzner said that Firefox 3.5 RC1 would be made available for download in the first week of June.
Last week’s Friday Test Day will be held again, since the RC of Firefox 3.5 was not delivered at the time. Mozilla QA, Aakash Desai, explains: “I'm here to inform that we're going to be holding another Fx3.5 RC1 Testday event on Friday, June 5th, from 7AM - 5PM PDT! It'll be a concentrated mozQA Community day committed to testing Firefox 3.5 RC 1. This time around we should have the real builds out this Friday. So, if you're interested in the new browser or want to help improve its quality, come join us in the #testday channel! Anyone that finds a *new* blocker bug or is our "toptester" (runs the highest amount of litmus testcases) for the day will be rewarded with a really cool MozQA shirt.”
Additional details on the event can be found on the official Mozilla QA web page – click here.
The latest nightly build of Firefox 3.5 RC is available for download here.
Until the Release Candidate is rolled out, the only Firefox 3.5 offering you can play with is Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 (download here). It comes with the following features:
- Support for 70 languages.
- Improved Private Browsing Mode.
- Enhanced stability and performance provided by the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
- Native support for JSON.
- Native support for web worker threads.
- Web standards are used for geolocation (Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 can thus provide Location Aware Browsing).
- Support for new web technologies.
- The option to restore closed Firefox windows, not just closed tabs.
Or you could think of something you can do very fast, make a 30 second video and upload it to the Fastest Firefox web page. Why would you want to do such a thing? Simply because Mozilla wants your to help in telling the world just how fast Firefox 3.5 really is (details here).
