Article by George Norman

On 08 Jan 2010

Every Firefox fan out there (including myself) was hoping that Mozilla would release a final version of Firefox 3.6 by the end of 2009 – but that did not happen. The best we got was Firefox 3.6 Beta 5. Still, work on Firefox 3.6 moves on and the Mozilla Foundation has just announced that it started compiling the first 3.6 RC1 builds. After the RC (Release Candidate) is out, the final, stable version of Firefox 3.6 is just around the corner. Can’t hardly wait!

Firefox Director, Mike Beltzner, is the one to make the announcement about the RC1 builds. Here is what he said:
“Just wanted to follow up to let everyone know that after months of development, we've started builds for Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate builds. We're pretty excited.”


Mozilla’s ftp servers are already serving the first RC1 build of Firefox 3.6 for Windows, Mac and Linux. The release notes for the RC1 are not available just yet, but the functionality that Firefox 3.6 will provide is not exactly a secret amongst Firefox fans. Still, here are some highlights:

- The manner in which 3rd party software integrates with the Firefox has been changed to provide enhanced browser stability.
- HTML5 File API support. This means the user would be able to load images to a web application without having to upload them to the server, for example. The images can be edited and saved locally, and they could optionally be uploaded when ready
- Built-in support for Personas.
- The number of supported languages has been increased (support for more than 70 languages).
- The ability run scripts asynchronously and thus speed up page load times.
- New API to give add-ons access to Firefox’s geolocation features
- The Firefox components directory is locked down.
- A mechanism that prevents Firefox from crashing when dealing with incompatible software.
- Built-in support for Firefox Personas.
- The user will be alerted when a plugin needs to be updated.
- Full screen and poster frames support for open, native video.
- WOFF font format support.
- The performance of the JavaScript engine has been enhanced.
- New CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies support.

UPDATE: Firefox 3.6 RC1 has been officially released, see here.



Tags: Mozilla, Firefox 3.6, RC1 Build

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