Mozilla’s developer community has released the second beta of Firefox 3.6 to fix 190 bugs in the original release. Moreover, all current Firefox 3.6 beta users have been issued an update containing improvements of interest to users as well as web and add-on developers.
The bug fixes released Tuesday include a mechanism to prevent incompatible software from crashing the browser, noted Firefox Director Mike Beltzner. However, Firefox 3.6 remains prerelease software, which means testers may encounter compatibility problems with some web sites and add-ons.
“Most add-ons have not yet been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta,” Beltzner cautioned.
Looking for a Boost
The release of a second beta of Firefox 3.6 in less than two weeks is a good indication that Mozilla is keen to bring its browser upgrades to market as quickly as possible. One possible reason why is that Google has recently been seeing accelerated use of its Chrome browser, which may pose the biggest threat to Firefox’s long-term prospects for growth.
StatCounter reports Firefox continued to maintain its number-two position globally in October with a 31.8 percent share of the browser market — an improvement of 6.5 percentage points over the past 12 months. Though Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to lead with a 58 percent market share, its slice of the global browser market has fallen 10 percentage points in the past year, data from the Dublin web-metrics firm shows.
By contrast, StatCounter’s data indicates that Chrome’s market share has risen by more than 3.2 percentage points to a 4.17 percent share during the past 12 months. By contrast, the use of Opera’s browser is declining and the market share for Apple’s Safari browser has fallen slightly behind Chrome for the past two months.
Mozilla hopes the final release of Firefox 3.6 will give it a boost…