Mozilla.org has been prompted to roll out a new release candidate of its web browser. Firefox 3.0 RC3, issued yesterday, offers a single bug fix for Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard users. Also yesterday, Mozilla announced its plans to release the final version of Firefox 3.0 on Tuesday, June 17.

"After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready," Mozilla said in a post on its Developer Center blog, according to Macnn.

Also yesterday, the Mozilla team found it necessary to release a workaround for a bug introduced in Apple's latest maintenance and security update, Mac OS X 10.5.3, that was released just three weeks ago. The bug causes some systems to hang or crash at start-up or shutdown, according to macnn. The website cites a user writing in the Bugzilla tracking system who was able to track the bug to the changes Apple made to "VerifiedDownloadPlugin" in Mac OS X 10.5.3:

"The problem is 'VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin', which is located in /Library/Internet Plugins. A little Googling reveals that this plugin was first introduced by Apple in 10.4.7, and I'm guessing that Apple did something bad in 10.5.3. We're dying in OS X's image loader," the user wrote. "Anyway, removing this plugin and rebooting solves the problem for me, but I'm worried that the plugin is part of Apple's download security scheme (maybe it's this plugin that is responsible for marking downloaded executables as coming from the internet)." the user added.

As soon as Mozilla was informed, Mike Shaver, Mozilla's chief evangelist wrote a message on the Bugzilla thread discussing the patch. According to Computerworld, he said: "Anything we do in our application will be a work-around; any real fix has to come from Apple, on their timeline."

The workaround prevents "VerifiedDownloadPlugin" from loading. Reports claim that Safari does not load the plugin. You may download Mozilla Firefox 3.0 RC3 for Mac right from HERE.