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Mozilla issues Release Candidate 2 of Firefox 3.0

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

June 4, 2008, 11:48 AM

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0 RC2 for Windows from FileForum now.

Flashpoint ribbon (small)

While Web users everywhere have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the final edition of Firefox 3.0 -- an event which some thought could happen this very week -- late yesterday, Release Candidate 2 of the browser appeared on Mozilla's FTP site.

Last week, Firefox developers were privately notified that an RC2 release would be necessary in order to address a new slate of bugs detected in RC1. As Mozilla's staff phenomenologist Mike Beltzner wrote last week, that decision was reached by the organization last Tuesday: "Due to the time required to complete some other external dependencies, we don't expect that this will significantly impact our shipping date, and still estimate a mid-June release date."

A quality assurance test for RC2, Beltzner added, is scheduled to be completed tomorrow. At that time, the organization may make available its formal list of changes and fixes between RC1 and RC2.

Update ribbon (small)

3:00 pm EDT June 4, 2008 - BetaNews tests of Release Candidate 2 show very little cosmetic difference between it and RC1. We did, however, notice the reappearance of two links in the default Bookmarks toolbar after a clean installation -- links that you'd typically find after installing Firefox 2.

A screenshot from Firefox 3.0 RC2 running in Windows XP SP3

"Getting Started" takes you to the familiar general tutorial page on Mozilla's Web site, which currently still uses graphics from Firefox 2. And "Latest Headlines" reveals a complete RSS news feed, currently provided by BBC News Online. Those items appear beside "Most Visited," which first showed up in 3.0 RC1.

Though few third-party themes have been updated to work with 3.0, Aeon 2.8 is among those that do appear to work with RC2 just fine. It lacks the rocker switch appearance of the Back and Forward buttons in Firefox's new default theme, called "Strata" (originally blue in the early public betas, now green), though its layout appears intact and in order.

Though the official notice of this build's release is scheduled for tomorrow, RC2 is currently downloadable from the specific location where public release candidates are posted, as opposed to nightly builds.

6:00 pm EDT June 4, 2008 - Late this afternoon, a Mozilla spokesperson verified for BetaNews that the build made available ahead of schedule is indeed the approved build of Release Candidate 2. Users are asked not to download the file from Mozilla's FTP site until at least tomorrow; you can, of course, download it from FileForum in the meantime.

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By tigger4046

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 11:54 AM

Well, i have the developer edition of IE8 which includes a IE7 emulate button that is quite interesting. Although IE8 brings many pages up quickly, most financial groups don't recognize it so i get the warning about unsupported. But if i click the "Emulate IE7" and return again then i'm permitted to logon to bofa.com. As of last night, my ff3 updated itself to rc2 and went smoothly. After comparing the two, I'm still a Firefox user by choice of preference.

Score: 0

By sturgess

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 10:44 AM

As before, all my Add-ons are working OK. Don't notice that much of a difference in speed between Firefox 2 and 3, not without getting the stopwatch out anyway. I think you guys are imagining it, still as browsers go this is pretty good. We'll just have to wait and try Bills beta in August to see which is the best. I know IE8 will always gets a fair and honest review here, and you lot won't even need to try it first before posting.

Score: 0

By Maymne

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 2:12 PM

To check speed difference, open up 50-100 windows and/or tabs, set FF to open up the windows/tabs from last time, and file->exit. Open in FF2 and it will probably take a minute or two to completely open the windows up and have everything resolve... FF3 will finish it in a significantly shorter period. :)

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 11:49 AM

I know IE8 will always gets a fair and honest review here, and you lot won't even need to try it first before posting.

*laughs*

Score: 0

By improvelence

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 10:25 AM

Working well, google needs to get off of their asses and update browser sync this is ridiculous.

Score: 0

By xyzcb1

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 3:19 PM

Try Fox Sync.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 11:48 AM

It's not an official "versioned" release. Many addon devs simply don't bother with these.

That said, check out Mozilla Weave for syncing. Haven't had a single issue with it.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 10:17 AM

I stopped using themes when the upgrades (1.5 or 2.0) kept breaking.

This is Mozilla's achilles heel. The extensions and themes are great features, but they still have issues getting them compatible for upgrades.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 11:46 AM

??

They are not responsible for the add-ons. They have zero control over the add-on's compatibility.

If they went Nazi" on the addon devs to require some strict set of functionality or methodology, we'd lose a large number of addon devs.

Most addons are compatible within days of an official version, and immediately with a point release (many do not bother with betas or RCs, but that's somewhat understandable, at least, IMO).

It sucks, I agree. I avoid (or try to) betas and RCs because of it. I fail to avoid it most times (like this release), but to me, it's worth the frustration. If it isn;t worth it for you, skip the release until a few days after the official final and all should be well. :)

Score: 0

By Maymne

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 2:13 PM

Or just use Nightly Tester Tools to make it think they're compatible, see if it breaks anything, and if it's fine, keep using it. :) That works also.

Score: 0

By robmanic44

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 9:38 AM

Worked just fine with XP. Now for the acid test, will it work with Vista.

Score: 0

By preinterpost

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 9:14 AM

FF 2 was a piece of turd endorsed by the usual folks who put up with compromise just not to run MSFT products.

FF 3 is actually very cool. A lot snappier and tight on resources. I guess if you load it up with tons of extensions there may not be much difference but fortunately I don't need more than 2 or 3. This might actually become my default browser (replacing ie7pro).

Score: 0

By Sven123456789

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 8:49 AM

With most of my extensions still not working in this latest release, I have to say, I won't be upgrading to 3.0 when the final comes out if this stays the same. Allot of people are flipping out over this new version. I don't see much change at all. If anything, I find the new Bookmark arrangement annoying. The other improvements are minor. And there isn't much of a speed difference. Speed is mainly dictated by your connection. I even went back to last summer of trying Netscape 4.7 and found that wasn't much slower than any of the newer browsers out there.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 10:19 AM

There is a massive speed difference if you work with 3+ tabs. Firefox 3 is javascript multithreaded, 2 isn't. The speed difference is readily apparent on every system I've tested it on, from Athlon 2500+ to core 2 duo 6600.

Score: 0

By cranbers

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 2:33 AM

Wow, this is excellent. The built in update system handled this for me so no need to download it separately.

I have been using 3.0 since beta 1 and its great to finally see extensions all come together now. If you use this for as your main browser then try ie7 or ff 2.0 again its painful.

Score: 0

By yountmj

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 11:57 PM

(originally blue in the early public betas, now green)

I thought they differentiated the different versions by making them blend more with the OS that they were installed on now. For instance, I noticed that the default theme for RC1 when installed on Vista had blue Back and Forward buttons, and when installed on XP they were green.

EDIT: Build 2008052906 on Vista has blue buttons still... for what it's worth.

Score: 0

By RobertM

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 12:04 PM

You are correct. (In fact, I think they might have originally been green on both XP and Vista.) During Firefox 3 developement, they added run-time OS-version-detection ability so that themes could use different images, such as the back/forward buttons here, depending on the OS version.

For what it's worth, they also added a DOM event (I think that's how it was implemented--in any case, they added it) that fires when the application becomes active/inactive, so a theme can also now use different images for those states. This is needed with the new theme on OS X, as Firefox "fakes" a Leopard-like appearance, and chrome in Leopard is turns light gray when inactive. (In the foreground, it's the iTunes-like darker shade.)

Just a few things they've done for greater visual integration with the OS lately.

Score: 0

By GS5

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 4:12 PM

Does anyone know if TMP works in rc2? I'm kinda lazy to find out on my own. Previous releases didn't even work with nightly tester.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 5:01 PM

http://tmp.garyr.net/dev-builds/

Last one in the list is the latest build and it works in RC2.

Score: 0

By GS5

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 8:04 PM

Sweet, TMP works!

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 1:17 PM

Rereading again, this may *become* the final RC2 build, but if it hasn't passed the QA yet, which it hasn't, according to both the article and Mozilla's own timeline below, then it's not technically been released yet as an official RC2.

That should happen sometime tomorrow.

Score: 0

By The MAZZTer

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 2:55 PM

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0rc2/win32/en-US/

Well it's in the right spot...

Score: 0

By zoma4

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 1:44 PM

It has passed QA, it just hasn't put up on the mirrors or set up for distribution yet. A check of the release schedule at

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.0rc2

confirms this.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 1:53 PM

Good find. It does indeed (looking at one page up and checking the QA results) look like it's passed all of QA (Build1 for Windows, Build2 for Linux/Mac).

Looks like they'll make it official tomorrow still, though.

Just found it odd BN was announcing the release when the article itself stated QA was still in progress and none of the sites had been updated.

Score: 0

By preinterpost

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 1:24 PM

>-(

Does anyone have an address at hand to get my dogs excrement routed to SF3?

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 1:29 PM

*laughs*

They do have a habit of jumping the gun on FF releases. I think this is the third time they've done it (it's really only bitten them once, though when Mozilla pulled it from the FTP servers).

Lesson: Nothing on their "nightly" FTP servers is final until they officially update their website and release schedule.

Official release site for RCs:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html

Release Schedule:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Schedule

I really want to hear from Scott on this. It is possible he's spoken with the devs and they have guaranteed him that *this* build is final. (Though it still wouldn't be an "official" release.)

Score: 0

By noBuddy

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 12:59 PM

Guess this is the first time i´m thinking about uninstalling FF.
Since version 3 I don´t like 50+ MB Database thing - okay i deactivated the phishing thing etc. But the straight connection to Google...
And evertime I open FF it writes into windows update log...
Maybe I wait unto final version - but the love died.

BTW: I´m using external protections, so I don´t need adblocker, antiphishing etc

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 1:04 PM

Last week, Firefox developers were privately notified that an RC2 release would be necessary in order to address a new slate of bugs detected in RC1.

???

Last week a meeting was held where they decided, due to two outstanding bugs, to go with RC2. Every other RC2 generating bug had already been squashed and committed. Hardly what anyone would call a "slate" of bugs....

...from: http://wiki.mozilla.org/...atusMeetings/2008-05-27

"most bugs for this RC have landed, waiting on bug 398332 and bug 435362"

Edit:

This article may have jumped the gun.

Estimated release schedule (RC2):

* Code complete: Wednesday, May 28, noon PDT
* Hand to build: Thursday, May 29, 6am PDT
* QA begins: Thursday, May 29th, noon PDT (as builds become available)
* QA signoff: Thursday, ***June 5th***

The current RC releases site:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html

...still lists RC1 as the latest RC. The installer is also named differently than their last official RC release.

This looks like a release candidate candidate. That's not redundant at all, is it? ;)

Scott, have you verified this through official channels???

Score: 0

By The MAZZTer

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 5:33 PM

I think the download is official. Mozilla started making unofficial nightly builds pop up a big warning the first time you start them up that they are not official beta or RC releases.

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 2:22 PM

how did you change your font?

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 2:32 PM

That bit towards the bottom is the code tag.

[code] blah [/code]

Score: 0

By dvferret

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 4:08 PM

i could of sworn thats exactly what i did earlier. i got it to work this time.

Score: 0

By snsh

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 1:30 PM

You can manually edit the download URL from saying 'rc1' to 'rc2' and that seems to work

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 1:42 PM

It does indeed.

http://download.mozilla.....0rc2&os=win?=en-US

...and you get a properly named file.

Still not what one would call an Official Release though. (QA testing still in the works and all...)

Thanks for the linkage, though. Have you tested it? Is it the same build as on the fileforum?

(Build for link above: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0)

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 1:24 PM

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 12:03 PM

No issues. I've been testing for 5 minutes. :)

Score: 0

By dvferret

edited Jun 4, 2008 - 2:21 PM

lol 5 minutes.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 10:20 AM

Here it is about a day later and still no issues.

Score: 0

By siryak

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 12:00 PM

Is google toolbar compatible with Firefox 3.0 yet? *Before you say it I like it because I can paste an address in it and it will go straight to it. This keeps my address bar from getting cluttered with a bunch of random links.*

Score: 0

By Briantist

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 4:55 AM

no, it doesn't work btw

Score: 0

By Briantist

posted Jun 5, 2008 - 4:40 AM

Being able to use the same bookmarks in IE and FF on different computers is quite handy too.

Score: 0

By Diam0nd

edited Jun 5, 2008 - 4:29 AM

lol
lame
any more questions on spyware compatability?

Score: 0

By zoma4

posted Jun 4, 2008 - 1:31 PM

The address bar in FF3 is different anyway. It's not just the addresses you've typed in, but it is much smarter than that. Google "Awesomebar" (the fantastic new name for it) and you'll get looks of good info.

Score: 0

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