Firefox 3.5 to arrive by end of June

The most protracted browser release in Firefox’s history will finally arrive at the end of June, according to Mozilla.

Mozilla director Mike Beltzner claims the organisation is “aiming the final release [of Firefox 3.5] around the end of the month,” in an interview with CNet.com.

It will bring an end to a painful labour for the browser, which started life as a modest Firefox 3.1 upgrade, but has seen so many delays and extra features added, that Mozilla decided to bump the version number up to 3.5.

Mozilla today announced that users of the 3.5 beta – which earlier this month entered a rather awkward pre-Release Candidate stage – are now being upgraded to the full Release Candidate.

“While Mozilla has not yet completed the quality assurance testing required before an official product release, this update is considered stable for daily browsing use and we appreciate your assistance in helping us test and evaluate this version of the release candidate,” the Mozilla Developer Blog states.

The Release Candidate is currently only being distributed to those already on the beta software. It will be made available as a standalone download at some point in the next week, Mozilla says.

Firefox 3.5 includes a series of key upgrades to the browser, including a completely revamped JavaScript engine, a private browsing mode and support for HTML5 video that doesn’t require any additional plug-ins.