14 DAY TRIAL // The delayed Firefox 3.6 is almost here, with the developers ironing out the final minor kinks. The release candidate version became available a little over a week ago, but it looks like there were still some things that needed work as a second release candidate, Firefox 3.6 RC 2, is now pushed for testing. This may hamper Mozilla's intentions of having the final build available to the public by the end of this month, three months after the initial plan of releasing 3.6 in November.
"An update to the Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate is now available. This second release candidate is available for free download and has been issued as an automatic update to all Firefox 3.6 Beta and Release Candidate users," Mozilla's Mike Beltzner writes.
As you can expect, RC 2 is a bug fixing release aimed at plugging all the remaining holes before the final build can be issued. If everything goes to plan, RC2 should be identical to the final release and no other changes will be implemented. This was true of the last RC and Mozilla has had a history of delays so further changes are still a possibility. Apart from all the known new features and updates, Firefox 3.6 RC 2, Mozilla says 70 bugs were fixed since the final beta. Moreover, the release candidate is now available in more than 70 languages.
Firefox 3.6 is the first major release since the touted 3.5 build last summer. It's an evolutionary update, bringing some new features but mostly building and improving the existing ones. Among the highlights are the light-weight theming engine Personas which is now built into the browser, better support for open video codecs and the proposed HTML 5 standard, support for a new open font format and improved JavaScript performance.
Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) for Windows is available for download here. Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) for Mac OS X is available for download here. Firefox 3.6 RC2 (Release Candidate) for Linux is available for download here.