14 DAY TRIAL // The fully-fledged Release Candidate Build of Firefox 3.6 is now available for download. Users keeping a close eye on Softpedia have already been able to download a preview version of the RC1 development milestone since January 6th, 2010. After it offered the candidates (nightly testing versions) of Firefox 3.6 RC1, Mozilla indicated that it was hoping to release the final post-Beta variant of Firefox 3.6 on January 8th, 2010. It looks like the developers of the open source browser managed to live up to their promise. The official Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate (RC1) is currently up for grabs from Mozilla.
The availability of Firefox 3.6, codenamed Namoroka, RC1 signals the fact that Mozilla is closing in on the release to web milestone. As the label implies, the Release Candidate of Firefox 3.6 is the browser in its near-final form. Mozilla is simply polishing up the bits and gearing up for the launch which is expected to take place later this month, by the end of January 2010. And provided that no new show-stopping issues will be identified in RC1 builds, Firefox 3.6 Final will be offered to the general public ahead of February.
Users should not be misled by the fact that Mozilla has yet to announce officially the availability of Firefox 3.6 RC1. As it is usually the case, the bits are first uploaded to the company’s FTP servers, and only subsequently offered through the official download channel and through the automatic update mechanism. Current users of Firefox 3.6 Beta will receive notices of the automatic upgrades to the Release Candidate stage over the coming few days.
Of course, early adopters already have the possibility to grab Firefox 3.6 RC1 and manually install the release. Mozilla delivered no less than five Beta Builds of Firefox 3.6, the last of which was offered just ahead of Christmas 2009. While it was initially planned for GA in November 2009, a month after the launch of Windows 7, Firefox 3.6 was postponed due to a variety of severe bugs/blockers that needed to be resolved before the minor update to Firefox 3.5 was ready for “public consumption.”
Firefox 3.6 RC1 (Release Candidate) for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 RC1 (Release Candidate) for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 RC1 (Release Candidate) for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.5.7 and Firefox 3.0.17 are available for download here.