Download Firefox 3.5.7 Beta and Firefox 3.0.17 Beta

Mozilla is moving forward with the upcoming releases for its currently supported versions of Firefox. Ahead of Christmas early adopters got the chance to download and start test driving the Beta development milestones of Firefox 3.5.7 and Firefox 3.0.17. Both downloads are currently being served through Mozilla’s FTP servers, as well as through each browser version’s update mechanism, as long as the users are part of the Beta testing pool. Users should bear in mind that Firefox 3.5.7 Beta and Firefox 3.0.17 Beta are pre-release software at this point in time, and will continue to be so until early next year, and as such are not ready for deployment into production environments.

Mozilla enumerated the new additions to Firefox 3.5.7 Beta: “Firefox 3.5.7 fixes the following issues found in previous versions of Firefox 3.5: fixed a common stability issue; fixed a problem with how updates were being presented to users.” Believe it or not, but the same two problems are also resolved with the delivery of Firefox 3.0.17, according to the company.

Mozilla delivered Firefox 3.5.6 and Firefox 3.0.16 in mid-December 2009, essentially releasing security and stability updates for v3.5.x and v3.0.x of the open source browser. Shortly after that, Mozilla noted that it had adjusted schedule to go for early January release to update users with fix for [a] bug which affects major updates. The first testing builds of Firefox 3.5.7 Beta and Firefox 3.0.17 Beta were made available to testers a few days ahead of Christmas.

With just three days left out of 2009, it is highly improbable that Mozilla will be able to deliver the last development milestone of Firefox 3.6, namely the Release Candidate Build. While the company said that it was aiming to offer Firefox 3.6 RC by the end of this year, most probably the successor of Beta 5 (revision 5) of v3.6 will only be offered to testers in early January 2010. Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, already confirmed that the final release of Firefox 3.6 had been postponed into 2010. In this regard, Firefox 3.5.7 Beta and Firefox 3.0.17 will also be offered for download early next year.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 (Beta revision 5) for Windows is available for download here.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 (Beta revision 5) for Mac OS X is available for download here.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 (Beta revision 5) for Linux is available for download here.

Firefox 3.5.6 and Firefox 3.0.16 are available for download here.