Firefox 3 is a go

As expected, the latest version of Mozilla's Firefox web browser, Firefox 3, was made available for download at 18:00(BST) on Tuesday.

After nearly three years in development, last Wednesday Mozilla announced that Firefox 3 was ready for release. During Firefox 3's development, memory-usage improvement has been a consistent theme.

Firefox's third release candidate was released on Wednesday last week, and contained a fix for loading issues with Mac OS X. The final release is identical to RC3, said the organisation.

Mozilla, on the release of the browser, is hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the most number of downloads of an application in a day.

There is currently no official Guinness World Record for the total number of downloads of an application in a day. During the first 24 hours of Firefox 3's release, Mozilla is aiming for more than 1.6 million downloads and hoping for five million.

Mozilla encouraged its community of more than 175 million users to sign up on the spreadfirefox.com marketing site to receive Firefox 3 yesterday, to host download parties, and to put Firefox badges on websites and blogs. According to Mozilla, more than 60,000 people in the UK pledged to download Firefox 3 on its release date.

ZDNet.co.uk's Andrew Donoghue contributed to this report

Original article: Firefox 3 is released for download from ZDNet UK