Bevan Rudge JavaScript and web technologist

I just got this email from Mozilla about the soon release of Firefox 3 release candidate, asking addon developers to get their extensions updated and released for FF3 RCs. If you have an extension released on addons.mozilla.org you would have received this email too. I have two variations of FF2's default Mac theme that enable favicons in the bookmarks toolbar: Mac Favicon and Mac Favicon XL. UPDATE: Mac Favicon and Mac Favicon XL have been deprecated and rereleased. See http://drupal.geek.nz/blog/mac-favicon-deprecated-and-released

I'm a bit shocked that this is going into RC already, since from my experience beta 5 is terribly less stable than beta 4. Yesterday it crashed at least 3 times in less than 10 hours after I updated. It has already crashed 4 more times today while trying to post this blog (Seems to be any click-initiated lifting with JS. jQuery? Drupal 6? Didn't crash with Drupal 5). The bookmarks menu item is still not working right. And the Google searchbar still pushes the bookmarks toolbar item off the edge of the toolbar.

As for getting Mac Favicon and MF XL updated, it's on my todo list in Things.app (although so are many other things), and it's my own itch -- I hate searching for text in the bookmarks toolbar, and text takes up too much horizontal real estate that I'd rather use for the google search bar (I have them on the same row).

You can expect a release of Mac Favicon XL... Well, I'm not gonna promise a date, but sometime. Mac Favicon is unlikely to get much love from me since I don't use it. Oh, and the FF3 versions will be based on FF3's new default mac theme, not FF2's.

Dear Add-on Developer:

We are officially at end game. Beta 5, the last Firefox 3 beta, has shipped. This means the next release will be a Firefox 3 release candidate. Please check your add-on for compatibility with beta 5, and if everything looks good, bump your maxVer on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) to "3.0pre". There are an estimated 1.2mil users running Firefox 3 betas, so your add-on will get some serious testing.

Once the first release candidate has shipped, and your add-on is supported, you will be able claim 3.0.* support on AMO.

If you are still having trouble getting updated, please see our detailed information on changes relevant to add-ons developers:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Updating_extensions_for_Firefox_3
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Firefox_3_for_developers#For_XUL_an...
http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2007/12/11/ensuring-compa...

As always, help is available on the #extdev channel on irc.mozilla.org and in the mozilla.dev.extensions newsgroup.

You should be validating against the final beta. Here are links to the builds:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Expect a release candidate in late April or early May.

Looking forward to a successful launch of Firefox 3!

Best regards,

Firefox Product Team