Finally, the development on the Firefox 3 browser is starting to wrap up. By the end of May, Firefox 3 will enter into the Release Candidate stage. And it’s expected that the long-awaited browser will hit the market in June. It was on their forums that Firefox 3 is targeted towards June.

Firefox 3 is expected to be one top-notch browser, because the pre-release versions have been tested out by about 1.2 million users! I’ve tried out all the Firefox 3 pre-releases, even before it got into Alpha stage, and have seen the remarkable performance improvements in it.

You won’t find any extraordinary or notable new features, but the performance enhancements are awesome! The memory usage Firefox 3 beats out most of the main steam browsers, including Firefox 2! I’m glad Mozilla didn’t compromise on performance just for the sake of a few new features.

We’ll start getting the Release Candidate versions from late May. According to the Mozilla Developer blog:

If no new showstopper issues are found in RC1 it will become Firefox 3 final. If we find any critical issues we will continue to release new Release Candidates until we are ready for final ship.

I still have a feeling that hey won’t be able to do it in one Release Candidate release. I mean, if we look at the release history of Firefox 2 and 3 (below), I’m sure Firefox 3 will have at least 2 Release Candidate releases before the final product.

Firefox 2

• Alphas: 3
• Betas: 2
• Release Candidates: 3

Firefox 3

• Alphas: 8
• Betas: 5

Well, that’s it from the Mozilla team. This time they’ve focused more on performance enhancements than adding new features. I was hoping to see a new theme. But.. Nevermind. Better luck next time! ;)