New Firefox hangs in limbo between beta and RC

On the same day that Apple released the public version of Safari 4 for Windows and Mac, Mozilla published an update to its Firefox 3.5 beta. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, they're not calling this a beta version, but it's not a release candidate, either.

The 800,000+ users of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 will be receiving an update to a “Firefox 3.5 Preview” release in order to assist us with further testing and feedback. This update contains many fixes for stability bugs, correctness fixes for our JavaScript engine, and improvements to our built in support for open Ogg based video and audio playback. While this release has not yet completed the testing required to be declared a release candidate, it is considered stable for daily browsing use and we appreciate your assistance in helping us test and evaluate this preview release.

If you’re a Firefox 3.5 Beta user you should be receiving this update automatically within the next 24 hours. To get the update immediately, select “Check for Updates…” in the “Help” menu.

If you’re not yet a Firefox 3.5 Beta user, we recommend that you wait for the upcoming Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate, which should be in the next 1-2 weeks. If you’d like to become a beta tester for Firefox 3.5 and subsequent updates, please install the latest available beta and install any offered updates.

Developers should also read the Firefox 3.5 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.5 Preview milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.