While it's slightly behind schedule -- having been originally slated for a mid-September release -- Firefox 3.6 has reached beta.
Version 3.6 beta RC1 is now available for download from Mozilla's servers. As Softpedia mentioned a few days ago, Mozilla is pondering an early exit for Firefox 3.5. Mozilla's Mike Beltzner stated, "It's not 100% decided yet, but if we issue a Firefox 3.6 as a minor update, then yes, we'd stop supporting the 1.9.1 branch at that time." He's referring to Gecko 1.9.1, on which Firefox 3.5 is based. 3.6 is based upon version 1.9.2 of the Gecko engine.
It may not benchmark in the same league as Google Chrome, but Firefox 3.6 certainly feels speedier. Our content management system runs more smoothly than it did for me under 3.5.3, and my go-to web apps like GMail and Seesmic are also more responsive.
A couple of features that appear in the 3.6 beta candidate: control-tab previews (as previously mentioned) and taskbar thumbnail previews on Windows 7 (not just for FF3.7 apparently).
Testers - if you've given 3.6 beta 1 a go, tell us what you think in the comments!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Firefox 3.6 reaches beta stage
