The Mozilla Project has issued a second release candidate (RC) for version 4.0 of its open source Firefox web browser. According to the developers, the second RC is a minor update with only a handful of changes. These include updates that blacklist several invalid HTTPS certificates, updated localisations for 29 locales and the addition of a Vietnamese localisation, bringing the total to number if localisations to 83.

Following a number of delays, last week Mozilla Senior Director of Engineering Damon Sicore said that the final version of Firefox 4 would ship on Tuesday the 22nd of March provided a second RC was not required – it is unclear whether this apparently minor update will change those plans.

Existing Firefox 4 users should automatically be notified of the update.

Firefox 4 is the non-profit organisation's next-generation web browser based on version 2.0 of the Gecko rendering platform (the Firefox 3.6 branch uses Gecko 1.9.2) and features a new Add-ons Manager and extension management API, as well as a new 'tabs on top' layout. More details about the development preview, including a short "What's new in Firefox 4" video, can be found in a post on the Mozilla blog and in the release notes.

Firefox binaries are released under the Mozilla Firefox End-User Software License Agreement and the source code is released under disjunctive tri-licensing that includes the Mozilla Public Licence, GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. The latest stable release is version 3.6.15, a maintenance update for Firefox 3.6.14, from earlier this month.

See also:

First release candidate of Firefox 4 is ready, a report from The H.

(crve)