Firefox 3.5 was released on June 30 after, well, not really that much of a publicity drive. Regardless, the newest build of the Mozilla Web browser managed to secure over five million downloads in the space of 24 hours. So, as well as being speedy, secure, and more stable, it’s also massively popular.

Sean posted about the release of Firefox 3.5 yesterday as soon as he’d downloaded it. Now, a day later, we can start to get a clearer picture over what effect Firefox 3.5 is having on the browser wars, and whether the hype over the increased speed and security are justified.

You can track the statistics concerning Firefox 3.5 downloads on a real-time basis thanks to Mozilla. It reached 1 million in less than an hour, with the rate of download at that time approaching 100-per-second. It then reached the 5 million downloads mark in just under 24 hours.

This is very impressive, although not as impressive as the world record total of 8.2 million achieved by Firefox 3 at almost the same time last year. Maybe Firefox 4, which is probably already being worked on and which will likely launch with a huge fanfare in the next year or so, will be able to beat the record set by its predecessor.

At the time of writing, the total number of downloads is 6.3 million, and the rate of downloads has decreased to between 20 and 30 per second worldwide. In terms of country, the United States is the location of the largest number of downloads, with Germany, Japan, France, and the U.K. completing the top five.

I’ve been using Firefox 3.5 for over 24 hours now and have to admit it’s very, very good. It’s too early to give a final verdict on how it performs but there are some noticeable improvements.

It’s a lot quicker than Firefox 3, possibly even competing with Google Chrome for the plaudit of being the fastest browser on the market. The new tab configuration is also an improvement, and the ‘Private Browsing’ feature, otherwise known as ‘Porn Mode’, works well, if no better than on other browsers. The program itself also seems to be more stable and less buggy, with multiple tabs not now slowing everything down to a snail’s pace.

Firefox 3.5 is a great new build of the ever-popular Firefox browser. There’s nothing revolutionary in there, but it’s a solid mix of increased speed, security, and stability, coupled with minor tweaks to make the experience of using the Web a much more pleasurable one.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 12:11 am under Internet, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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