While making headway in the development of the first Beta build of Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko, Mozilla is also tending to the 2.0 and 3.0 versions of its open source browser. In this context, the latest releases of Firefox 3.0  and Firefox 2.0 are now available for download. Both Firefox 3.0.2 and Firefox 2.0.0.17 went live concomitantly on September 23, with Mozilla having synchronized the refreshes for Shiretoko's precursors. On the road to Firefox 3.1, Mozilla plans to kill Firefox 2.0 in mid-December 2008, and with Shiretoko available in early 2009, following at lease a couple of Beta releases, Firefox 3.0 will not enjoy a long life either.

“As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.0.2 and Firefox 2.0.0.17 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads,” revealed Mike Beltzner, User Experience Lead. “We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3 or Firefox 2, 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.”

In terms of security, v2.0.0.17 is designed to fix no less than nine issues, while v3.0.2 will deal with just five holes. No less than four of the security holes plugged by Firefox 2.0.0.17 have been labeled Critical by Mozilla, with two of the vulnerabilities resolved by Firefox 3.0.2 exposing the users of the open source browser version to the highest degree of risk.

“Most of you are used to these regular security and stability updates but there's an all too often uncelebrated minor update that really deserves some attention this time around: localizations. With today's release, we've now got official releases for Sinhala and Slovene as well as beta releases for Bengali, Galician, Hindi, Icelandic, Kannada, Marathi, Telegu, and Thai available for testing. That's 8 new locales coming online for Firefox 3, bringing the total up to 57,” explained Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's community coordinator.

Both Firefox 3.0.2 and Firefox 2.0.0.17 are available for download here.