The wait for Firefox 3.0 is nearly over. In less than a week, Mozilla will make available the successor of Firefox 2.0. The final version of Firefox 3.0 will be made available on June 17, 2008. On June 11, following the launch of Release Candidate 3 for Firefox 3.0, Mike Beltzner, User Experience Lead informed that Mozilla has finally managed to indicate the exact finish line for the next iteration of the open source browser. In this context, Firefox 3.0 will drop almost two years after Firefox 2.0, which went live at the end of October 2006.

"Whenever we're asked 'when is Firefox going to be released' we endeavor to answer to the best of our abilities, but the truth of the matter is that we'll only ever ship 'when it's ready'. We have a lot of indicators that help us understand when the product is ready for release: feedback from our pre-release milestones, excitement in the community and the press, availability of compatible Add-Ons, and a large active beta community helping us ensure that the release is compatible with all the various sites on the Internet," Beltzner revealed.

Initially, Firefox 3.0 was planned for finalization at the end of 2007. The poor quality of the open source browser in 2007 combined with a prolongued Alpha stage of the development process pushed Firefox 3.0 to mid-2008. Having released Firefox 3.0 RC2 at the start of June, Mozilla indicated that it would attempt to move directly to the gold build of the browser. However, it had to deal first with a show stopping bug affecting Mac OS X, and RC3 became necessary.

"After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 - the best web browser, period," Beltzner added.

Firefox 3.0 RC3 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0 RC3 for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0 RC3 for Mac OS X is available for download here.