Firefox 4 has suffered some setbacks as far as an official launch goes, but I think the public at large will be happy with the fact that they took a little ‘bit of extra time to work all the major bugs out.  Firefox 4 will also mark the last big release cycle Mozilla will do with the browser, so we may not have long drawn out countdowns any longer.  The reason for this is that the Mozilla team is opting for smaller and quicker releases, such as Google Chrome and other browsers like it have been doing.

When Firefox 3 came out, it had a record setting 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, back in 2008.  Will Firefox 4 be able to come close to that number? I guess we will see tomorrow!

* – image above from the Mozilla Firefox 4 t-shirt design contest.

This year I hesitated to download any of the release candidates, because they always seem to spoil some of the surprise.  So, like many of you, I am anxiously awaiting Mozilla’s web site update that says Firefox 3.5 is ready for download.

9:43 AM CST – Firefox 3.5 is out via Mozilla’s web site!

Go here to download.  Be sure to add a comment and leave us your first impressions of the newest version of Firefox!

8:16 AM CST – Looks like we figured out a hacked-up way to get Firefox 3.5 from Mozilla.  Go to this address:

• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=en-US

FileHippo.com also boasts about having Firefox 3.5 ready for download already too.  Why/how is Mozilla letting all these other places jump the gun and beat them to the punch?

7:00 AM CST – Softpedia is claiming to have Firefox 3.5 Final, haven’t tested it yet.  Also, even the president of Brazil seems to be getting into the Firefox 3.5 release party mood:

6:07 AM CST – Nothing much to be seen yet.  I saw on Lifehacker they do have a confirmation that Firefox 3.5 will be released today.  Mashable also has a nice post on what’s on tap for Firefox in 2010 that should hold you over.

More news coming soon!  Keep checking back for more!

Might also be a good time to remind you to subscribe to Firefox Facts via our RSS feed.  Join the over 6,000 happy followers of the feed for free.  You can subscribe by e-mail too!

Keep coming back throughout the day, and we’ll have more coverage that you can shake a stick at.  If you have any well wishes for the Mozilla team, Firefox 3.5 feedback or anything else you wish to share – be sure to leave a comment and join the party!

My personal favorite feature I have seen thus far, that shows the most innovation is the support for embeddable video, without the use of any plugins or third party scripts.  This multimedia embedding functionality of HTML 5 may not be widely used yet, however this does give it a proverbial first kick in the pants to take off and become successful.

Of course, I wouldn’t be doing the Firefox 3.5 project justice if I didn’t mention the speed boost too.  However, I’m not really sure that is something real users will notice.  Maybe it is just me but Firefox 3 for me right now is still pretty darn fast.  You can check out a full list of features via Mozilla’s web site:

• Features List for Firefox 3.5

Seems like this time around Firefox’s newest release has either sneaked up on me, or perhaps isn’t getting as much coverage as the last.  What do you think?  Are you excited yet?

So you woke up early, ran to your PC, wanted to download Firefox 3 and you see there is no buzz about it yet.  Did you mark the right day on your calendar?

Yes, today is Download Day for Firefox 3.

Right now we are just waiting for Mountain View, California, USA at 10:00:00 AM. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) to happen.  At that time the switch will be flipped and Firefox 3 will be ready for the masses!

To help with the time conversions, check out this link.  For the US, it looks like the eastern time zone will get it at 1:00 PM.  The central time zone gets it at noon.  The mountain time zone gets it at 11:00 AM and the west coast will get it at 10:00 AM.

Now I just wonder how many times an hour the Firefox home page will be refreshed during the day looking for changes?

Keep sending in your comments and questions, will be helping you all through out the day!

Update: Watch the Mozilla team’s progress through all of today’s tasks and jobs:  http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.0

Update #2: Once the time has come, most of us can pickup the download here:  http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/ Downloading from here will not be counted towards the world record downloads. So please try to do it via getfirefox.com.

Update #3: Loads of fake Firefox 3 sites are popping up, especially on sites like Digg.com.  Please make sure you go to mozilla.org to download Firefox 3 and no where else.

Update #4: Less than an hour to go, and SpreadFirefox.com is having MySQL connection issues. All you Spread Firefox peeps feel free to join us here. :D

Update #5: It’s time! No wait – getfirefox.com is already dead.

Update #6: Here is the latest from Mozilla:

The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!). Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live. The 24 hours period will be clocked from that moment. Thanks for your continued support.

Update #7: Mozilla’s Firefox web site is coming back up with a new design!
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Update #8: Mozilla’s Firefox web site is now pointing to the Firefox 3 download link. Enjoy! (If you get “connection interrupted” try again… later.)

Update #9: Able to grab Firefox 3 yet? If so, then grab your own certificate as a special gift for helping out:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/certificate_form

Update #10: Mozilla.com web traffic is pushing well over 2 Gigabits a second of just pure HTTP traffic. That is in addition to the 13 Gigabits a second or so of download traffic. We are still at around 14,000 download/minute and mozilla.com is responding well! Go Mozilla community and IT team!

+ Need a New Theme for Firefox 3? – FirefoxFacts.com has got you covered!

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Firefox 3 is really awesome. 

After 34 months of hard work, determination and the contributions of thousands it is time to put your party hats one and celebrate!  As they say, Firefox 3 will be the best browser, period. 

Speaking of awesome, victory and the like you can check out all the really cool robot art leading up to the Firefox 3 release via John Slater on Flickr.

While your waiting for next Tuesday to get here, remember to go pledge your download along with 1,084,700+ who have already done so.