The first release candidate of Firefox 3 sees the Mozilla developers well ahead of their original roadmap which envisaged a test version at the end of May.
Of course, this does not apply to Firefox development itself which is several months behind schedule. A release date for the final version of Firefox 3 has not yet been disclosed, but the fact that the browser has now reached the RC phase suggests June as a likely release date.
The release candidate is fairly close to the finished product with respect to functionality and performance, however, some plugin incompatibility can be expected, and various bugs still have to be fixed. Both of these factors are obstacles to production use. Linux users should also consider the fact that LC1 does not scale correctly at a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels and that graphical buttons may not be displayed. There is also some incompatibility to Nvida drivers and some X server versions which could cause incorrect image rendering.
The RC1 download is available in various languages, and for the Linux, Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. Bug reports are welcome.
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