Mountain View (CA) – Mozilla announced on Saturday that it has put the finishing touches on the Release Candidate 1 code of Firefox 3. The developers are optimistic that RC1 is pretty much the final code of the new browser: If there are no unexpected bugs, RC1 will turn into Firefox 3.

At this time, Firefox 3 RC1 has been released into a closed beta testing phase to a group of about 1.2 million users. There is no information when RC1 will be made available to the general public, but we would expect the software to its download servers.

According to a post on the developer blog, Mozilla expects RC1 to become Firefox 3 final “if no new showstoppers are found”. In case new bugs are surfacing, Mozilla intends to release further release candidates “until [Firefox 3] is ready to ship”.

There is no information on the possible availability of Firefox 3, but given the optimism of the developer team, we believe that June is a realistic timeframe for the launch and boost of Firefox downloads – which stand at about 549.7 million as of this morning.

The release of Firefox 3 rings in another round in the browser battle between Mozilla and Microsoft. At least from today’s view, Mozilla seems to have a huge time advantage over Microsoft, whose IE8 is still in an early beta phase.  You can read learn more about the differences between the two new browsers in our previously published story Firefox 3 Beta 4 reveals difference in design philosophy to IE8.  

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May 12, 2008 09:33     

I hope that they fixed the url becouse in beta it was enoying that it wasn't precise when je type a letter.
Vito report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Google Browser Sync

May 12, 2008 10:41     

I hope Google will release an updated version of their sync tool very soon, so I can upgrade to 3.0 when it comes out!
ab report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Closed? Not so much.

May 13, 2008 01:21     

Don't know that I'd call it "closed" as anyone can download it right now.
Mark S report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Ubuntu

May 13, 2008 05:30     

Wubi allows you to install Ubuntu as a windows application, then you get dual boot and all ^^ It brings a firefox 3 beta, pretty fast imho
Phil report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

@Mark S

May 13, 2008 07:12     

Where can you download RC1? According to this link: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.0rc1 it's not released to the public yet and on the main firefox site its only beta 5 that you can download. I haven't looked at any torrent sites though.
John report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Not closed at all. It's open to everyone.

May 13, 2008 15:51     

I want to clarify that the term "closed beta" is incorrect. Every build of Firefox (nightly, beta, release candidates, etc.) is open to the public, and there's nothing special you need to do use the release candidate when it's out. As soon as the RC1 is built, tested by QA, and placed on our public download site, anyone in the world can use it. We think you will love it, and we can't wait to hear what people think! :) Thanks for the great article. Cheers, Damon

Damon Sicore report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2