Firefox 3.0 was launched on June 17, 2008. The successor of Firefox 3.0 went over the 18 million downloads milestone in just the first week of availability, with the first 8.3 million only on day one. As of June 24, both the Spread Firefox Download Day website and the official downloads counter for Firefox 3.0 are no longer counting the new copies of the browser being grabbed by end users. Mozilla aimed to make Firefox 3.0 the most downloaded piece of software in history, and passing the 8 million mark certainly did the trick.

"By the end of the 24 hour period, the unofficial count clocked in at more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads! The Guinness judges still have to validate the record attempt, and the Spread Firefox team is standing by to announce the results when they're available. Since then, another 10 million copies of Firefox 3 have been downloaded, bringing the total to over 18m in the first week," Mozilla informed.

But June 24 is not only synonymous with the end of the first week since Firefox 3.0 became available for download. It also marks the first meeting on Firefox 3.1. Mozilla is already working on the successor of Firefox 3.0, and version 3.1 is planned for availability by the end of this year. Designed to bring to the table everything that 3.0 didn't, Firefox 3.1, Codenamed Shiretoko, will feature the underlining Gecko 1.9.1 rendering engine.

"One of our biggest goals for the Mozilla.com redesign was to kick our presentation of Firefox 3 up a few notches, so to speak. With that in mind we really expanded the Firefox section of the site, adding a detailed features page, tips & tricks, information about security and add-ons, and more. We also figured that, since some concepts are more easily shown than explained, it would be a good time to add our first-ever video to the site," explained John Slater, Creative Director at Mozilla.

Firefox 3.0 is available for download here.


Firefox 3 overview from Mozilla Firefox on Vimeo.