Mozilla has announced plans to update the Firefox 3.0.x and Firefox 3.5.x branch today earlier this week. The updates are currently distributed to the official mirror server network to be prepared for the increased traffic after the official release announcement.

Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2, which you can download from Mozilla's Web site. Release Candidate 2 is the first version of Firefox 3.5 that average users might want to run, since it's faster and more stable than the beta versions were. Firefox 3.5 boasts a number of significant changes.

Although Firefox 3.5 (formerly Firefox 3.1) is still in beta, Mozilla is already developing Firefox 3.6 code-named Namoroka. Slated for an early-to-mid 2010 release, the browser will be marketed as Firefox.next (FX) moniker in a nod to new technologies set to take Firefox to the next level.

Even as Mozilla rolls out Release Candidate 2 of its Firefox 3.6 browser update, and is only days away from the official release, some are convinced that the upstart open source browser is doomed. However, Mozilla’s director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, provides some good reasons why it isn’t.

"The first Firefox 3 Release Candidate is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.

Six months after the last big Firefox release, Mozilla today is rolling out Firefox 3.6. The new browser, which began its life under the codename Namaroka", includes numerous enhancement over its predecessor, Firefox 3.5.

Mozilla announced today the official release of Firefox 3 beta 4, which includes over 900 additional improvements related to the previous beta release. At this stage in development, most of the work on Firefox is heavily focused on polishing the user interface, refining performance, and reducing the memory overhead. These efforts clearly show in beta 4, which is highly robust and impressively responsive.

One of the most interesting developments in recent years has been the rise of Mozilla. Not Mozilla the browser, aka Firefox, which has become a serious challenger to Internet Explorer: that's old hat. Less well known is the way that Mozilla the organisation has turned from a rather desperate and leaky lifeboat for the open-sourced Netscape Navigator code into a mighty battleship blasting hither and thither against outposts of proprietary software.

I got up this morning and saw this, which led me to a pretty serious WTF moment, all before having my morning coffee.

From the article:

"Mozilla’s Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner confirmed the fact that an x64 flavor of Firefox won’t be added to the existing x86 version, per the 32-bit/64-bit Internet Explorer 8 model.