Firefox 3.5 set for release tomorrow

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 29 Jun 2009 at 09:34

Mozilla will finally unveil Firefox 3.5 on 30 June.

The revamped browser has been available in Release Candidate form since the middle of this month.

Now the open-source developers are set to make good on their promise of delivering the browser by the end of June, by the slimmest of margins.

A spokesman for Mozilla told PC Pro that the company is "98% sure it will launch tomorrow", at around 5pm UK time. The discovery of a last-minute bug is seemingly the only obstacle to launch.

Firefox 3.5 has had a long, and somewhat tortuous, development path. It started life as a relatively minor 3.1 update, but acquired so many new features on the way that Mozilla upgraded it to 3.5 to reflect the amount of effort that's gone into the upgrade.

Many of the new features are under the bonnet, including the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which brings Firefox level with Chrome and Safari in terms of raw performance, according to our benchmark tests.

Other new features include support for HTML 5 video and audio, and a private browsing mode.

The forthcoming launch of Firefox 3.5 has led to a flurry of activity among Add-on developers, with extension updates now appearing on an almost daily basis as developers rush to ensure their Add-ons remain compatible with the new browser.