Firefox 3 Release Candidate Arrives

Mozilla took a huge step forward in the development of Firefox 3 this past Friday by making the first release candidate of the browser available to the public. Intended for testing purposes only, Firefox 3 RC1 was initially expected sometime at the end of the month. It appears that things are ahead of schedule. The first build since Beta 5 was released back in early April, RC1 includes user interface and performance improvements, several bug fixes, as well as a number of security and stability enhancements. This may turn out to be the final development version of Firefox 3, as the official public release is expected sometime in June. That is a best case scenario, however, and more than one release candidate is usually the norm with a project of this magnitude.

Firefox 3 RC1 is available for download in over 45 different languages for the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms.