14 DAY TRIAL // The first security and stability update for Firefox 3.5 is now available for download. Firefox 3.5.1 went live on July 16th, 2009 and is currently up for grabs for all users who are running the latest iteration of the open-source browser released in June. According to Mozilla, version 3.5.1 is focused on patching security vulnerabilities, on resolving the stability issues that survived past the final version delivered the past month, as well as a problem affecting the startup and loading performance of Firefox 3.5 on some Windows systems.
In total there are approximately 20 fixes introduced into Firefox 3.5.1. The most important issue resolved involves a Critical security vulnerability with details already available in the wild. Exploits targeting the security flaw in Firefox 3.5’s Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler can be launched as drive-by-downloads, requiring absolutely no interaction beyond the user visiting a malicious website.
But users should be ready for more updates. Mozilla has postponed resolving some problems until the launch of Firefox 3.5.2. The next stability and security update for Firefox 3.5 is planned for late July, or the first week of August at the latest. No word yet on when the company will start serving automatic upgrades of Firefox 3.5.x to users of older versions of the browser, or whether 3.5.1 or 3.5.2 will be selected as the major update.
In addition to Firefox 3.5.1 testers can also grab candidates for the upcoming 3.0.12 release which is expected to drop next week. “We now have a build available for the upcoming Firefox 3.0.12 security and stability release. Note that this build is a release candidate and is intended for pre-release testing. We would like your help in testing the release and identifying any possible regressions or issues before final ship. Please hammer on these builds mercilessly to make sure that your stuff works with them! If you notice things that worked in Firefox 3.0.10 and do not work in this release, we would like to know about it right away,” revealed Carsten Book, Mozilla Quality Assurance engineer.
Firefox 3.5.1 for Windows is available for download here. Firefox 3.5.1 for Linux is available for download here. Firefox 3.5.1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.