Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries. “The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen” said Marketing head Paul Kim. Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it “an extremely impressive accomplishment”. The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted. Marketing manager Mary Colvig said no party is planned to celebrate the record until the actual certificate is presented by Guinness World Records in London next week.

The company said while IE reached a record low last month, it predicted Firefox will break the 20% share bar sometime this month. Mr Kim said “We offer the best browsing experience and this shows people are getting the message and voting with their browser choice.” Meanwhile Mozilla has shipped a high priority update for Firefox 2.0, warning that there are at least five serious vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution attacks. Mr. Kim said Mozilla will continue to support Firefox 2.0 until the middle of December. After that users will be expected to switch over to Firefox 3.0 which since its launch over two weeks ago boasts 28 million downloads and counting.

[via BBC]

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written by Councillor Ben \\ tags: Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Firefox Download Day, Guiness World Record

If you haven’t downloaded it already, Mozilla has issued a preview release of Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1. It is designed for ‘testing purposes only’…they want developers and the community as a whole to provide feedback! With your input the final release version will be that much better.

Firefox 3 will offer improved performance and stability, mostly due to the fact that it is based on the Gecko 1.9 web rendering platform. 1-click site info, malware protection, a new web forgery protection page and more is also going getting tweaked in the latest build.

One thing is for sure… When Firefox 3 officially drops it is going to be more solid and stable than ever… and offer more features that we will all benefit from. I especially appreciate the attention to security improvements, including malware and forgery protection.

The first thing you will probably notice upon installing the new release candidate, is how much the design feels like Safari. Looks like Mozilla has taken some design cues from the Safari browser and have implemented them into this version. I like it!

To download your copy of Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1, click here. The app is available in many languages, and in versions for WIndows, Max OS X and Linux.

To provide your feedback on Firefox 3 Release Candidate, click here.

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written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Firefox 3, Firefox 3 Release Candidate, Firefox Version 3.0rc1