14 DAY TRIAL // The past week, Mozilla released the first patch for Firefox 3.5 concomitantly with the candidates for version 3.0.12 of the mid-2008 release of its open-source browser. As of July 21st, 2009, Mozilla wrapped up Firefox 3.0.12, and the security and stability update is currently available for download. End users running version 3.0 of Mozilla's open-source browser can grab the refresh manually via the links at the bottom of this article, or as an update through the automated infrastructure that delivers patches to Firefox.
“As part of Mozilla's ongoing security and stability update process, Firefox 3.0.12 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download,” revealed Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance engineer at Mozilla. “We strongly recommend that all Firefox 3.0.x users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting "Check for Updates..." from the Help menu.”
According to Mozilla, version 3.0.12 of Firefox is designed to deliver resolves for several security and stability problems. At the same time, there are also specific bugs that have been fixed with the release: “Fixed an issue introduced in Firefox 3.0.11, where Firefox would occasionally freeze when accessing the Java plug-in on Windows XP. Fixed an issue introduced in Firefox 3.0.11, where Firefox would not save data properly when a user stored their home directory on a remote location using AFP. On Mac OS X, fixed an issue where certain AppleScripts failed to return the proper information,” Mozilla noted.
Firefox 3.5, the successor of Firefox 3.0, was released to web at the end of June 2009. In under two months the browser was downloaded more than 35 million times, according to Mozilla. As far as Firefox 3.0 is concerned, the company is planning the next stability and security update for August 2009. August 4 is the proposed date for Firefox 3.0.13 code freeze.
Firefox 3.0.12 and Firefox 3.5.1 for Windows are available for download here. Firefox 3.0.12 for Linux is available for download here. Firefox 3.5.1 for Linux is available for download here. Firefox 3.0.12 and Firefox 3.5.1 for MAC OS X are available for download here.