14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has made available for download a preview version of the upcoming security and stability update to Firefox 3.5.3. A Beta development milestone of Firefox 3.5.4 is currently available for download from Mozilla’s FTP servers. Testers that will grab the release and start test driving it are encouraged to hunt down especially regression issues. Specifically, Mozilla is looking to identify problems that were introduced following the evolution from version 3.5.3 to 3.5.4.
“We now have a Firefox 3.5.4 release candidate available for testing. Note that this builds are release candidates and is intended for pre-release testing. We would like your help in testing the release candidate sand identifying any possible regressions or issues,” revealed Carsten Book, software engineer working for the Mozilla QA Team.
The Firefox 3.5.4 Beta bits are offered as standalone downloads for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, but are also served automatically to existing testers. Existing participants in the beta program for the open-source browser don’t need to take any action in order to download and install Firefox 3.5.4 Beta. “If you are riding the "beta" channel, you can manually check for updates and update to this build). Otherwise you will have to download,” Book added.
If all goes well, Mozilla plans to release the final version of the Firefox 3.5.4 stability and security update next week, on October 21st, 2009. This would make Firefox 3.5.4 available for download one day before the official general availability deadline of Windows 7. Mozilla is also working to release a new development milestone for the successor of Firefox 3.5.x later this week, taking Firefox 3.6 from Alpha to Beta.
“Please hammer on these builds mercilessly to make sure that things work well! If you notice things that worked in previous Firefox 3.5.3 and does not work in this release, we would like to know about it *right away*,” Book said.
The latest releases of Firefox for Windows are available for download here.