The first release candidate of Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 is live. While Microsoft has barely managed to confirm the fact that the next version of Internet Explorer is... (are you ready?) Internet Explorer 8 (I'll bet you didn't see that coming!!!), Mozilla is making headway with the development of Firefox 3.0. After spending an extended period of time in Alpha stage, the first beta for Gran Paradiso was dropped on November 19, 2007. At the beginning of the past month, Mozilla got the true measure of the anticipation for Firefox 3.0, when the first release candidate for Gran Paradiso Beta 1, taken for the full Beta, catalyzed a flood of downloads.

"Dev is officially handing Beta 2 off to the Build team to generate an RC. As I understand it, we are now using the automated build mechanism for this release. Once Build generates the RC with branding in place, they will hand off to QA for testing. Build Team, please send notice to release-drivers & dev-planning as soon as this is completed so we can re-open the tree", revealed Damon Sicore, Mozilla Director of Platform Engineering.

Microsoft continues to remain mute regarding Internet Explorer 8, and this strategy will undoubtedly hurt its proprietary browser and its market share, as Mozilla is coming in hard from behind. While IE8 is planned for late 2008, early 2009, Mozilla is in the initial stages of the second Beta for Firefox 3.0, with just a few additional development milestones until the final product. As a matter of fact, Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 RC1, a nightly build, is already available for download. The release is addressed at developers, and Mozilla has not issued the Beta 2 RC1 for Windows. Only for Linux and Mac OS X, for this time. The final Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 is currently scheduled for December 21.

"The process of building and testing builds which will become Firefox 3 Beta 2 [has] began - development handed over control to the build team for branching and tagging. As always, the build team will generate a series of release candidates which will be tested by the Quality Assurance team. In order to limit distribution of this not-yet-tested release, anyone who was linked to the release candidate download directory will be redirected to this announcement. While we appreciate the attention and devotion of our users, we ask them to wait until we have completed testing", Mozilla revealed (this link will take you to Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 RC1).

Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 and 2.0.0.11 can be downloaded from here.