[UPDATED] Firefox rolls out 3.0.3
Posted by Peng on 25 September 2008
Yesterday Mozilla rolled out a security and stability update for Firefox 3, including fixes for two Critical bugs and they also fixed “several stability issues.” Firefox 3.0.2 is compatible with the JAWS 7.10 screen reader (Windows only), which is good for people with vision difficulties, and is now available in even more languages.
Updated 7:39a Saturday, 27 September: Late yesterday Mozilla did a whiplash-causing quick turnaround and pushed out Firefox 3.0.3. It seems this new version is solely to fix bug 454708 – storage-Legacy can throw when calling ConvertToUnicode, which is geek-speak for being unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords, according to the release notes. I’m curious to hear how this slipped past the tester’s notice, especially since the update came less than 48 hours after 3.0.2 came out. I’ve already gotten the notice that the update was available from Mozilla. (Remember, I use their code rather than Ubuntu’s package, although the Update Manager told me they have the update as well.)
Full details on the update are available in the release notes, as well as on Marco Zehe’s blog. Users of Firefox 3 should have already been notified of the update through the Automatic Update mechanism, and if not you can force an update check via Help > Check for updates… Ubuntu users should also be receiving the update via the Update Manager soon if you haven’t gotten it already.
For users of Firefox 2 remember that Mozilla will no longer support Firefox 2 with security and stability updates after 12 December, so if you’re among the minority that hates the changes in Firefox 3 with the heat of a thousand nuns you only have a few months left of updates before you’ll be using an obsolete program.
Steven said
I do believe they rolled out 3.0.3 yesterday also.
Peng said
I saw someone post about Firefox 3.0.3 on the Ubuntu Forums yesterday and I wondered what the heck they were talking about. The Firefox site said 3.0.2 when I checked late yesterday but now I see that there is a 3.0.3 available now. I’ll edit my OP to show what item forced the immediate turn-around.
Unfortunately this second update in as many days does little to make me like Firefox 3 any more. It seems that not only are the devs shoving the need for new add-ons (actually remove-ons) down users’ throats, someone’s also being asleep at the switch when testing updates. I’ll have to poke around on mozillaZine to try to find out exactly why they didn’t hold 3.0.2 to catch this new bug, or if it’s a regression that someone decided should get another new version instead of holding the version they were working on until the bug got munched.