News 

This latest beta is feature locked, with Mozilla largely concentrating on fixing bugs in existing features and tidying up the interface.

The modest number of changes suggests that the browser is almost ready for its final release.

Last month, Mozilla's president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, said that Firefox 3 would launch in June, and if this is the final beta version of the software, Mozilla looks firmly on target to meet that launch date.

The beta 5 release notes

ADVERTISEMENT

claim that more than 750 changes have been made to the browser since the previous beta, although the vast majority of them are beneath the hood.

There have been slight amendments to the browser's icons, and improved integration with both Mac and Linux platforms.

Mozilla is also making bold claims about the new beta's speed. "Improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimisations have resulted in continued improvements in performance," the release notes claim.

"Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 5, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases."

While Mozilla adds the final layers of polish to Firefox 3, Microsoft is only embarking on the early stages of development of Internet Explorer 8, with the software only at the first beta stage.

You can download Firefox 3 beta 5 here