Mozilla Announces Firefox 3.5 RC1 Imminent Release
The Mozilla Foundation has come out to provide a few details about the upcoming Firefox 3.5 browser, mainly when it will be able to make the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of this piece of software available for download. The last offering Mozilla provided was Firefox 3.5 Beta 4; the latest stable version of the Mozilla developed web browser is Firefox 3.0.10.
According to Firefox Director, Mike Beltzner, 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. If all goes according to plan, then Firefox fans from all over the world will be able to get their hands on the Release Candidate early June (first week of June to be more precise).
“We are down to 52 code-blockers (and 12-non code blockers) remaining for Firefox 3.5. Based on this, the great progress we've been making on blockers over the past two weeks, and estimates from the component leads, we're setting an aggressive code freeze target of next Wednesday, May 20th for Firefox 3.5 RC. Everyone should be putting their primary efforts on fixing blockers. Anything you can do to help a blocker or blocker nomination [1] along (regression range discovery, nightly testing, reduced testcase creation, not bothering the people who are working on blockers) would be greatly appreciated,” said Mike Beltzner.
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.
According to Firefox Director, Mike Beltzner, 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. If all goes according to plan, then Firefox fans from all over the world will be able to get their hands on the Release Candidate early June (first week of June to be more precise).
“We are down to 52 code-blockers (and 12-non code blockers) remaining for Firefox 3.5. Based on this, the great progress we've been making on blockers over the past two weeks, and estimates from the component leads, we're setting an aggressive code freeze target of next Wednesday, May 20th for Firefox 3.5 RC. Everyone should be putting their primary efforts on fixing blockers. Anything you can do to help a blocker or blocker nomination [1] along (regression range discovery, nightly testing, reduced testcase creation, not bothering the people who are working on blockers) would be greatly appreciated,” said Mike Beltzner.
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.
