Firefox 3.5 to get first patch mid-late July

by Steve Ragan - Jul 2 2009, 17:10

Mozilla Corp. is said to be planning a round of patches and bug fixes for its newly released browser update due later this month. As was the case during the 3.0 release, Mozilla released Firefox 3.0.1 just four weeks later, addressing several bugs and security issues.

The patches, coming only a few weeks after Firefox 3.5 was released to the public, will address what Mozilla calls "topcrashes", or bugs that lead to consistent crashes in the browser. In its weekly meeting notes, Mozilla said the goal was a quick turnaround, due to the number of reported crashes using the built-in crash reporter -- some of the bugs have been serious enough that version 3.5 was almost delayed.

There were three bugs listed in the notes that were certain for release. The first, dealing with a bug that causes Arabic letters to disconnect in edit fields, is viewed as an issue because of the number of users who require the language -- on any platform. The second centers on nsCryptoHash, and has an accompanying bug discussion that reaches back to April of 2008.

TraceMonkey, the JavaScript engine used in Firefox 3.5 that actually offers a decent speed boost to the browser, is set to get a patch as well. The bug, according to notes from July 01, is the sole issue in the topcrash list for version 3.5.

Mozilla’s QA dept. will be holding a Security Test Day to flush out potential problems, with the testing phase set for July 10. In addition, a general "BugDay" is also scheduled for July 07. This testing day will include the recently discovered bugs but also aims to discover new ones that can be patched.

It is expected that these testing days will lead to more fixes for version 3.5, which, according to Web statistics, has already been downloaded 7.5 million times since its release.

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