After an extended beta test period, the Mozilla Group has released Firefox 3, RC1 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The release is supported in over 45 languages.

New features and changes in this release include:

• Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
• Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability.
• Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.

The release is immediately available for download, and has a Whatis New, release notes and known issues page.

The final release is expected in June.

Firefox is a free application. The Mac version requires OS X Tiger or later.