The Internet Explorer team at Microsoft sent Mozilla a cake to mark the release of Mozilla Firefox 3. Mozilla Corporation employee Al Billings, who used to be a project manager for the IE team, posted some photographs of the cake, which features a large Internet Explorer 'e' logo and the message, "Congratulations on Shipping! Love, The IE Team".

This isn't the first cake Mozilla has received from Redmond: in 2006, the IE team sent another cake to congratulate Mozilla on the release of Firefox 2. Mozilla Creative Director John Slater took a photograph of the Firefox 3 cake next to the last piece of the Firefox 2 cake, which has apparently been sitting in a freezer for the past twenty months.

Relations between Microsoft and rival browser manufacturers haven't always been so cordial: in 1997 when Internet Explorer 4.0 was released, Microsoft dumped a giant metal IE logo on Netscape's front lawn. Netscape employees responded by tipping over the prop and spray-painting "Netscape Now!" (a slogan used by the browser maker to encourage users to download) on its side. They then placed a statue of Netscape's green Mozilla mascot — described in contemporary reports as being either seven feet (2.1 metres) or twelve feet (3.7 metres) tall — on top of it and adorned it with a placard reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18", a reference to the market shares of the two leading browser vendors at the time.

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The official Mozilla Blog reports that there were over eight million downloads of Mozilla Firefox 3 in the twenty-four hours after release, despite the widespread server availability problems. The Spread Firefox Download Day 2008 page has an interactive map showing the numbers of downloads in different countries and Mozilla Corporation CEO John Lilly has a weblog post with more statistics from Firefox 3's first twenty-four hours.

Once the exact figure has been determined and verified by Mozilla's own judges and officials from Guinness World Records, Firefox 3 will be declared the holder of the world record for the most software downloads in twenty-four hours (since the record doesn't exist yet, there's no real doubt that it will be awarded to Firefox 3). The Download Day FAQ has more details about the specifics of the record attempt.

The Blog of Metrics, run by the metrics and analytics team at Mozilla, reports that Firefox 3 had a market share of around four percent at the end of Download Day, based on hour-by-hour tracking of Firefox 3's market share by Net Applications (it was around 0.96 percent when Net Applications began tracking). By comparison, it took Firefox 2 a month to reach 3.62 percent.

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Mozilla Firefox 3 has been released. Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 46 different localisations, Firefox 3 is the most major Mozilla browser release since the launch of Firefox 2 in October 2006 and represents the culmination of over three years work (development on Firefox 3 began before even Firefox 1.5 came out). According to the press release announcing Firefox 3, the new version has over 15,000 improvements.

Firefox 3 can be downloaded from the redesigned Firefox product page or the Firefox 3.0 directory on releases.mozilla.org (it's not yet being offered to Firefox 2 users via the software update system). More information can be found in the Firefox 3 Release Notes.

The use of newer technologies means that Firefox 3 has higher system requirements than Firefox 2. In Microsoft land, Windows 95, 98, ME and NT 4.0 are no longer supported. On the Mac side, the minimum OS X version jumps from 10.2 Jaguar to 10.4 Tiger. In both cases, the operating system versions that are no longer supported have long since been abandoned by even Microsoft and Apple.

The Mozilla servers have been experiencing problems due to high demand for Firefox 3. This actually delayed the full release of Firefox 3 by more than an hour. According to a Mozilla Developer News weblog post, Firefox 3 is being downloaded more than 14,000 times a minute.

With the launch of Firefox 3, Mozilla is hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in twenty-four hours. The number of downloads so far can be tracked at downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com. Only full, completed downloads count and users have until 11:16am Pacific Daylight Time on Wednesday (6:16pm UTC/GMT) to make a participating download. The official Mozilla Blog has an entry about the Download Day with more details.

Those who just can't get enough of the Firefox 3 launch are invited to attend a Mozilla Party to celebrate or watch the action live from Mozilla HQ on Air Mozilla.

Read the full article for more details about what's new in Firefox 3.

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Mozilla Mac developer Josh Aas has written a weblog post discussing some of the under-the-hood improvements specific to the Mac OS X version of Mozilla Firefox 3.

Josh describes how Firefox 3 has largely switched from Apple's legacy Carbon API (initially created to make it easier for developers to migrate OS 9 applications to OS X) to the more modern Cocoa. He also details how Firefox 3 delivers native-looking Aqua-style form controls in Web pages and explains how this actually has very little to do with the change to Cocoa.

Finally, Josh covers how graphics in Firefox 3 are drawn using Core Graphics (which encompasses the Quartz technologies) and ATSUI instead of the deprecated QuickDraw (which has been around in some form or another since the original Macintosh was launched in 1984). This change was achieved by replacing the Mac-specific graphics code with the cross-platform cairo library, which uses Core Graphics and ATSUI on OS X. Core Graphics can take advantage of hardware acceleration to improve performance.

All the changes Josh discusses were implemented in version 1.9 of the core Gecko rendering engine (rather than being specific to Firefox 3), so they will also find their way into other Mozilla-based applications, such as Mozilla Thunderbird (version 3.0 will be based on Gecko 1.9) and Camino (though Camino has used modern OS X technologies since its inception, it will benefit further from the upgrade to Gecko 1.9 in Camino 2.0).

Josh has also written a post outlining plans for more OS X improvements in Gecko 1.9.1, which is scheduled for completion around the end of this year. Much of the work will focus on continuing to remove Carbon code in favour of Cocoa, which will pave the way towards enabling 64-bit versions of Firefox and other Mozilla applications (64-bit OS X programs cannot use Carbon), though this work is unlikely to be finished in the 1.9.1 timeframe. Other improvements may include support for HTML data on the clipboard and reading proxy settings from the system-wide Network preferences.

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Deb Richardson has written a lengthy, screenshot-filled Field Guide to Firefox 3 with information about the new and improved features in Mozilla Firefox 3, which launches on Tuesday.

Topics covered include the Add-ons manager, bookmarks, CSS, support for color profiles, the Downloads window, font and text rendering, browsing history, the <canvas> HTML element, showing non-ASCII characters in the Location bar, malware protection, the Microformats API (for extension developers), password management changes, performance and memory usage improvements, phishing protection, plugins, the Site Identification button, enhanced Location bar autocomplete, tabs, the default theme, audio and video podcast support, integration with Parental Controls on Windows Vista and Web application protocol handlers. Each section of the guide includes links to articles and weblog posts containing more details.

A Simplified Chinese translation of the Field Guide to Firefox 3 is available and Deb has released the Field Guide to Firefox 3 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license to encourage other translations.

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The Mozilla Developer News weblog is carrying an announcement that the final version of Mozilla Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday 17th June.

"After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready," the message says. "It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th."

It should be noted that there is still a small chance that a show-stopper bug could delay the release. However, barring any unforeseen disasters, Firefox fans can now circle next Tuesday in their calendars as Firefox Download Day when millions of users will attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. Anyone planning to host a Mozilla Party on the actual Firefox 3 launch day now also knows which date to target.

The third and final release candidate of Firefox 3 was made available earlier today with a workaround for a Mac OS X bug.

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A third release candidate of Mozilla Firefox 3 has been issued with a workaround for a bug introduced in the latest 10.5.3 update of Mac OS X. The problem causes the operating system to hang on shutdown if an application tries to open the VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin file, which is a browser plugin included in OS X and accessed by Firefox under certain circumstances. Though the bug is not caused by Mozilla code, the developers have decided to include a workaround in Firefox 3 to prevent users from being exposed to the hang. The problem has also been reported to Apple.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 can be downloaded from the Firefox release candidates download page or the 3.0rc3 directory of releases.mozilla.org. Existing Firefox 3 release candidate testers can also upgrade using the built-in software update feature of the browser. Note that although RC3 builds are available for Windows and Linux, they do not contain any changes from RC2; only the OS X builds are different.

The Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 Release Notes contain general information about the improvements in Firefox 3. Technical information about the specific OS X 10.5.3 VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin issue can be found in bug 436575.

Interested community members are invited to take part in a Firefox 3 RC3 Testday on Friday. The virtual event will take place in the #testday irc.mozilla.org channel on Friday 11th June between 7:00am and 5:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (2:00pm Friday to midnight Saturday UTC/GMT).

As well as Firefox 3, the VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin bug introduced by OS X 10.5.3 also affects Firefox 2. For this reason, the workaround has been checked in to the 1.8 branch and will presumably be included in the next minor update of Firefox 2. Other Mozilla-based applications may also be impacted.

Update: The Firefox 3 RC3 Testday will take place on Friday 13th June, not the non-existent Friday 11th June as stated above.

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Mike Beltzner has created a screencast introducing some of the new features in the forthcoming Mozilla Firefox 3. The overview, which is in Adobe Flash SWF format and lasts three minutes and forty-six seconds, covers the new Location bar autocomplete functionality (dubbed the "awesomebar" by its fans), one-click bookmarking using the new star button, bookmark tags, the site identity button (personified by Larry the passport officer), malware protection, improvements to the file download user interface and the built-in Add-ons browser.

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Mozilla is aiming for a new Guinness World Record for the most downloads in 24 hours. Spread Firefox is running a drive to download Firefox 3 on launch day.

At this time, over 800,000 people have pledged to download Firefox 3 to help set the Guinness World Record.

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John Slater, Creative Director at Mozilla, has posted a collection of 53 mozilla t-shirts at his weblog. For a closer view, visit the Flickr set of mozilla t-shirts. If you have images of other mozilla t-shirts, post a comment at John's blog

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The second candidate build for Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser is now available for testing. Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 can be downloaded from the Firefox Release Candidates page. The Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 Release Notes have more details.

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Gervase Markham has posted a note on his weblog announcing that mozillaparty.com is now open for booking parties to celebrate the release of Firefox 3 and also Mozilla's 10th anniversary.

At this time, there are over 200 parties registered, and over 900 people signed up to attend.

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The preview release for Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser is now available for testing. Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform which includes 33 months of platform improvements over Firefox 2.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 can be downloaded from the Firefox Release Candidates page. The Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 Release Notes have more details, including information about what's new in Firefox 3. The Firefox 3 for developers article on Mozilla Developer Center includes useful links for Web application and add-on developers.

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Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5 has been released for testing. The fifth beta of the next major Firefox version offers over 750 bug fixes over Beta 4, including improvements in user interface, location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom and other new features based upon user feedback.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 can be downloaded from the Firefox beta page. The Firefox 3 Beta 5 Release Notes have more details, including information about what's new in Firefox 3 and what's been improved in this specific milestone. The Mozilla Developer News weblog's announcement of Firefox 3 Beta 5 includes links of interest to developers.

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Today marks ten years since Netscape Communications Corporation released the Netscape Communicator 5.0 source code. The source code was managed by Netscape-backed mozilla.org until 2003, and is now managed by Mozilla Foundation.

VentureBeat has published a Q&A with Mozilla CEO John Lilly, and Wired News has published a photo tour of the Mozilla Headquarters in Mountain View, California to mark the occasion.

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Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4 has been released for testing. The fourth beta of the next major Firefox version offers over 900 bug fixes over Beta 3, including improvements in download manager, full page zoom, better integration with Vista, Mac OS X and Linux, and significant improvements in speed and memory usage.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 can be downloaded from the Firefox beta page. The Firefox 3 Beta 4 Release Notes have more details, including information about what's new in Firefox 3 and what's been improved in this specific milestone. The Mozilla Developer News weblog's announcement of Firefox 3 Beta 4 includes links of interest to developers.

A fifth beta milestone has been added to Firefox 3 Schedule based on the number of blockers remaining. Code Freeze for beta 5 will be on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008.

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Gervase Markham wrote in to inform us that Mozilla intends to participate in Google Summer of Code 2008 as a mentoring organization. Gerv's weblog post calls on interested people to submit proposals at the Brainstorming page at mozilla wiki.

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