Is Firefox 3 late?

The geniuses (or should that be genii??) behind the Firefox project have come up with a nifty bit of marketing to get everyone to download the latest release of their web browser.  Instead of just releasing it, they’re hyping it up and going for a world record to see how many downloads they can accumulate in the space of 24 hours.  Firefox 3, available for PC, Mac, and all those ‘other’ operating systems, should be a massive step forward compared to Firefox 2, and challenges most other browsers too.  It claims to be faster than Safari on the Mac, and faster than IE7 on the PC, and with the enormous community base and a massive library of add-ons available, Firefox’s finger in the pie is surely set to grow.

However, there has been significant confusion in the world-wide-web community, because it’s still not available.  We were told that Firefox 3 would be available on 17th June.  It’s been 17th June all day, and here in the UK we’re running out of day in which to download the darn thing.  And yet there is no sign of it on the Firefox web site.  There are some clever people who have managed to locate the actual download separate from the web site, but that’s cheating somewhat, and I wonder whether those results will count in the world record stats.  Take a look at the comments on this news item and you’ll see people from around the world thoroughly confused at the lack of the promised download, wondering how, why and who screwed it all up.

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