The latest beta version of Mozilla’s extremely popular browser Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 was recently pushed to testers and eager users worldwide. It’s mostly a bug fixing release, unsurprising at this stage in the development process when the focus is on rounding out the rough edges. Still, there are a couple of new features geared more at developers, but which will potentially improve the user experience significantly, like the brand new support for the HTML 5 File API.
Mozilla says a total of 100 bugs have been fixed from the previous beta version and it looks like Firefox 3.6 is now very close to a final state. Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 should be the final beta release, and a release candidate version and also the final build are expected to come by the year’s end. The new release focuses on add-on compatibility as 3.6 is considered a major release so add-ons have to be upgraded to support it.
There was talk of labeling 3.6 as a minor update, which would have meant developers wouldn’t have had to update their add-ons, but it looks like those plans were dropped after several developers complained it would create confusion about the versioning system. Still, Mozilla claims that about 70 percent of the add-ons available in the online gallery have now been updated, and it is urging users to help the developers by i… (read more)