With Mozilla more focused than ever on pushing Firefox 3 out of the door as soon as possible, it's only logical that anything remaining to be fixed in Firefox 2's already stable code is taking a longer time than expected unless it's a critical security bug.

However, for the past three months myself and other members in our staff have been forced to downgrade to older versions of FF2 or look elsewhere for a stable browser since Firefox 2.0.0.11 just kept crashing on us no matter what we did. From the response I got on a blog post back in December we were not alone either.

You can download Firefox 2.0.0.12 today (Windows/Other platforms) which according to the release notes fixes "crashes with evidence of memory corruption," so it's a recommended update for everyone. There is an even brighter future for Firefox ahead. If you haven't tried the Firefox 3 betas, I can tell you it feels speedier and more responsive, although the lack of compatible add-ons make it a big no-no for daily use at least for now. Mozilla is expected to release Beta 3 next week.

On even more related browser news, Apple is cooking some interesting features for Safari 3.1.