Firefox 3.5, codenamed Shiretoko, is a major development milestone in Mozilla Firefox web browser development, where developers decided to skip Firefox 3.1 Moniker (Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 been changed to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 directly). After 4 betas and 3 release candidates (RC), Firefox 3.5 has been finalized.

Firefox 3.5 includes the following new features:

  • Firefox now available in more than 70 languages.
  • Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
  • Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
  • The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
  • Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
  • Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
  • Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.

There is also a rather technical features list for Mozilla Firefox 3.5 at Mozilla Wiki, or what’s new in Firefox 3.5.

Firefox 3.5 is scheduled to officially release to the web for general public download on June 30, 2008. The new version is currently distributed to all official mirror websites. Although the official announcement of the Firefox 3.5 release is not now up on the Firefox homepage yet, but that does not mean you can’t download Firefox 3.5 from the official source. Just head to the following URL to access official Firefox 3.5 download page:

Firefox 3.5 (English US) for Windows: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=en-US
Firefox 3.5 (English US) for Mac OS X: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=en-US
Firefox 3.5 (English US) for Linux: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-US

Firefox 3.5 (English UK) for Windows: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=en-GB
Firefox 3.5 (English UK) for Mac OS X: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=en-GB
Firefox 3.5 (English UK) for Linux: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-US

Firefox 3.5 (German) for Windows: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=de
Firefox 3.5 (German) for Mac OS X: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=de
Firefox 3.5 (German) for Linux: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=de

Firefox 3.5 (French) for Windows: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=fr
Firefox 3.5 (French) for Mac OS X: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=fr
Firefox 3.5 (French) for Linux: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=fr

Firefox 3.5 (Spanish Argentina) for Windows: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=es-AR
Firefox 3.5 (Spanish Argentina) for Mac OS X: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=es-AR
Firefox 3.5 (Spanish Argentina) for Linux: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=es-AR

Firefox 3.5 (Spanish Spain) for Windows: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=es-ES
Firefox 3.5 (Spanish Spain) for Mac OS X: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=es-ES
Firefox 3.5 (Spanish Spain) for Linux: http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=es-ES

Once Firefox 3.5 is officially announced, the web browser can also be upgraded via the built-in update checked in the web browser. To do so, just go to Help -> Check for updates.

Update: Firefox 3.5.1