Mozilla developers have quietly launched the first release candidate for Firefox 3.5 today. Like previous releases, it is based on version 1.9.1 of the Gecko layout engine and includes several performance and stability improvements to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. New features like Location Aware Browsing and Private Browsing Mode are part of this version, which also adds support for HTML5 video and audio elements, downloadable fonts, several new CSS properties and HTML5 offline data storage for online applications.

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The Firefox 3.5 RC 1 that is downloaded is the Beta 4. Wait until Mozilla has updated the Beta to the RC 1 before downloading.

As I said, the official page still links to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, but if you follow the download link on the story you will get RC1. You can also update from the beta or get it directly from Mozilla's FTP directory.

I downloaded Firefox 3.5 RC1 from our download section with no problems, but decide to go back to Firefox 3.0.11 because the new release candidate doesn't have support for the Roboform toolbar.

Ya RC doesn't support alot of the Add-Ons yet but wow the speed makes up for it. Everything just POW and its there ;)

Roboform support is available if you download the extension from here:
http://www.roboform.com/browsers.html#browser_mozilla

In my case I tried the Beta 99 a few days ago and felt it was consistently slower than the 3.0 version. Whether it was the fault of the browser or some of my add-ons, I just got back where I started less than impressed.

After 4 hours testing i'm keeping 3.5 RC. Far better than 3.0.XX!

This is one of those things where people won't have a choice, right ? Firefox will download this new version sometime this month automatically to people who have the older Firefox installed, right ? They will in general say "sure, update me" so that older versions of Firefox will pretty much go away soon right ? I am so excited for @font-face i can't even tell you.

Well there are settings you can google for that will disable FF checking for addon compatibility...all but 1 of my addons (downthemall) work perfectly even though they "aren't compatible".

And I'm also sure there's a setting that will disable automatic forced upgrading.

I'd like to do the same, but after having re-installed 3.0.11, I still got 3.5. :-(