Firefox 3.6

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is a version of the Firefox web browser released in January 2010. The release's main improvement over Firefox 3.5 is improved performance (due to further speed improvements in the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine). It uses the Gecko 1.9.2 engine (compared to 1.9.1 in Fx 3.5), which improves compliance with web standards. It was codenamed Namoroka.^[4] In this version, support for X BitMap images was dropped.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6

Firefox 3.6 displaying Wikipedia on Ubuntu 10.04.
Developer(s)	Mozilla Corporation Mozilla Foundation
Initial release	January 21, 2010 (2010-01-21)
Final release	3.6.28 ^[1] (March 13, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-03-13))
Preview release	None [±]
Written in	C++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript,^[2] CSS^[3]
Engine	Gecko
Operating system	Windows Mac OS X Linux BSD Solaris OpenSolaris
Platform	Cross-platform
Size	9.8 MB (Linux) 18.7 MB (Mac OS X) 8.2 MB (Windows) (all archived)
Available in	75 languages
Type	Web browser FTP client Gopher client
License	MPL/GNU GPL/GNU LGPL/about:rights
Website	www.mozilla.com/firefox/3.6

This release marked the beginning of a new development cycle for Firefox. As well as receiving major updates, the browser also received minor updates with new features. This was to allow users to receive new features more quickly and the dawn of a new roadmap that reflected these changes.^[5]

It was superseded by Firefox 4, released the next year, although Fx 3.6 had a prolonged period of use and version 4 had noted user interface changes. Firefox 3.6 is the last major version of an official Firefox release to run on PowerPC-based Macintoshes (see TenFourFox for a much-more-recent version of Firefox for PowerPC-based computers running Mac OS X). Soon after 4, much less weight was given to major version numbers, with 6 numbers used by September of that year (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) compared to 3 in nearly a decade of Firefox development (1, 2 and 3).

Firefox versions 4 through 9 had all reached end-of-life status while Mozilla continued supporting Firefox 3.6 with security updates. Coinciding with a proposal to cater to Enterprise users with optional Extended Support Releases beginning in 2012 based upon Firefox 10, Mozilla discontinued support for Firefox 3.6 on April 24, 2012 ^[6][7] with automatic update to Firefox 12 pushed out to compatible devices by June 2012.^[8]

Development

Development for this version started on December 1, 2008.^[9] The first alpha of version 3.6 was released on August 7, 2009.^[10] The first beta version was released on October 30,^[11] followed by Beta 2 on November 10, Beta 3 on November 17, Beta 4 on November 26, and Beta 5 on December 17.^[12] Release Candidate 1 was released on January 8, 2010, followed by Release Candidate 2 on January 17.^[13] The final version was released on January 21, 2010.

Minor releases

Market share overview According to StatCounter data April 2024^[14] This box: view talk edit

Browser % of Fx % of total Firefox 1 — — Firefox 2 — — Firefox 3 — — Firefox 4 — — Firefox 5–9 — — Firefox 10–16 0.35% 0.01% Firefox 17–23 — — Firefox 24–30 — — Firefox 31–37 — — Firefox 38–44 — — Firefox 45–51 — — Firefox 52–59 2.43% 0.07% Firefox 60–67 — — Firefox 68–77 — — Firefox 78–90 0.69% 0.02% Firefox 91–101 — — Firefox 102–114 4.86% 0.14% Firefox 115 and 115 ESR 13.54% 0.39% Firefox 116 — — Firefox 117 — — Firefox 118 3.47% 0.10% Firefox 119 — — Firefox 120 0.35% 0.01% Firefox 121 0.69% 0.02% Firefox 122 0.69% 0.02% Firefox 123 2.08% 0.06% Firefox 124 42.01% 1.21% Firefox 125 19.79% 0.57% Firefox 126 — — All variants^[15] 100% 2.88%

Firefox 3.6.2 was released on March 23, 2010,^[16] followed by version 3.6.3 on April 1^[17] which closed some bugs in the ASLR and DEP handling found at the Pwn2Own contest 2010.

The Firefox developers created a new feature called Lorentz. It is named after the Lorentz National Park. A preview version of Lorentz, Firefox 3.6.3plugin1, was made available on April 8, 2010.^[18] Betas of Firefox 3.6.4 were made available starting on April 20, 2010. Firefox 3.6.4 was released on June 22, 2010.^[19][20] The Windows and Linux versions incorporate out-of-process plug-ins (OOPP), which isolates execution of plug-ins (Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime and Microsoft Silverlight by default) into a separate process.^[5][21] This significantly reduces the number of Firefox crashes experienced by users who are watching online videos or playing games;^[22] the user can simply refresh the page to continue. Mozilla states that 30% of browser crashes are caused by third-party plugins.^[23]

Support for other plug-ins by default in OOPP and on the Mac OS X platform became available in Firefox 4.^[24]

Firefox 3.6.6 lengthens the amount of time a plug-in is allowed to be unresponsive to the point before the plug-in quits.^[25]

Firefox 3.6.7 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[26]

Firefox 3.6.8 was a security update that was released a mere three days after 3.6.7, to fix another security fault.^[27]

Firefox 3.6.9, in addition to fixing security and stability issues, introduced support for the X-FRAME-OPTIONS HTTP response header to help prevent clickjacking.^[28]

Firefox 3.6.10 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[29]

Firefox 3.6.11 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[30]

Firefox 3.6.12 was a security update that fixed a critical security issue.^[31]

Firefox 3.6.13 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[32]

Firefox 3.6.14 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[33]

Firefox 3.6.15 was a stability update that fixed a Java applets issue.^[34]

Firefox 3.6.16 was a security update that blacklisted a few invalid HTTPS certificates.^[35]

Firefox 3.6.17 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[36]

Firefox 3.6.18 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[37]

Firefox 3.6.19 was a stability update that fixed several issues.^[38]

Firefox 3.6.20 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[39]

Firefox 3.6.21 was a security update that blacklisted a compromised HTTPS certificate.^[40]

Firefox 3.6.22 was a security update that revoked the SSL certificates for "Staten der Nederlanden" due to fraudulent SSL certificate issuance, as well as fixing an error with .gov.uk domain names.^[41]

Firefox 3.6.23 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[42]

Firefox 3.6.24 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[43]

Firefox 3.6.25 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[44]

Firefox 3.6.26 was a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[45]

Firefox 3.6.27 was a security update that fixed several issues.^[46]

Firefox 3.6.28 is a security and stability update that fixed several issues.^[47]

Features

New features for Firefox 3.6 include

• Built-in support for Personas (browser Graphical user interface themes)
• Check and notification of out-of-date plugins^[48]
• Full-screen playback of Theora video
• Support for the WOFF open web font format^[49]
• Plug-in directory lock down: Plugins may only to be installed using a .xpi file, not through mere copying to the Firefox plugin directory. This breaks older plugins such as the Java Runtime Environment before 6 Update 15,^[50] net framework before 1.2.
• Many performance improvements^[12]

End of life

Mozilla discontinued support for Firefox 3.6 on April 24, 2012,^[6][7] which at over 27 months of support made it the longest supported version of Firefox, even longer than Firefox 2 which had over 26 months of total support itself. The underlying Gecko 1.9.2 engine continued to be used, with updates, in Camino.

See also

• History of Firefox

References

1. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.28 Release Notes". website-archive.mozilla.org.
2. Inc, Rietta. . Rietta. Archived from the original on August 4, 2009. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
3. Walsh, David (July 10, 2008). "Firefox 3's Internal Rendering CSS".
4. "Firefox/Namoroka". Mozilla Wiki. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
5. "Firefox 3.6 due this month; next comes 'Lorentz'". CNET. 2010-01-13. Retrieved 2010-01-17.
6. Upcoming Firefox Support Changes, March 23rd, 2012
7. "Extended Support Proposal". Mozilla Wiki. Retrieved 2011-11-09.
8. "Firefox 3.6 will automatically update to Firefox 12". Mozilla Support. Retrieved 2012-06-07.
9. Alfred Kayser (2008-12-01), First step to Firefox 3.2: Alpha 1 is here, Mozilla Links, retrieved 2008-12-01
10. "Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 now available for download". Mozilla Developer Center. 2009-08-07. Retrieved 2009-08-07.
11. "Firefox Delivery Meetings 2009-11-04 - MozillaWiki". Mozilla. 2009-11-04. Retrieved 2009-11-05.
12. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 Release Notes". Mozilla.com. 2009-12-17. Retrieved 2010-01-05.
13. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-01-08. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
14. "Top 12 Desktop, Mobile, Tablet & Console Browser Versions on Apr 2024". StatCounter Global Stats.
15. "Top 9 Desktop, Mobile, Tablet & Console Browsers on Apr 2024". StatCounter Global Stats.
16. "Firefox 3.6 Release Notes". Mozilla Foundation. 22 March 2010. Retrieved 8 September 2010.
17. "Firefox 3.6 Release Notes". Mozilla Foundation. 1 April 2010. Retrieved 8 September 2010.
18. "Firefox 3.6.4 beta available for download and testing". Mozilla. 2010-04-20. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
19. Tristan (2010-05-21). "Frogs, stability and performance". Archived from the original on 2012-07-23. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
20. "Firefox 3.6 Release Notes". Mozilla Foundation. 22 June 2010. Retrieved 8 September 2010.
21. "Chrome gets updated, Firefox 'Lorentz' enters beta".
22. Beltzner, Mike. "Firefox 3.6.4 with Crash Protection Now Available :: The Mozilla Blog". Blog.mozilla.com. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
23. "Plugin Checker Launched " Mozilla Webdev". Blog.mozilla.com. 2009-10-13. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
24. "Firefox/Crash Protection - MozillaWiki". Wiki.mozilla.org. 2010-07-04. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
25. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.6 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-06-26.
26. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.7 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-07-20.
27. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-07-20.
28. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.9 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-09-07.
29. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.10 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-09-15.
30. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.11 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-10-19.
31. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.12 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-10-27.
32. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2010-12-09.
33. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.14 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-03-01.
34. . Mozilla. 2011-03-04. Archived from the original on 2011-07-14.
35. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.16 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-03-22.
36. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.17 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-04-28.
37. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.18 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-06-21.
38. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.19 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-07-11.
39. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.20 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-08-16.
40. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.21 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-08-31.
41. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.22 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-09-07.
42. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.23 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-09-27.
43. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.24 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-11-08.
44. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.25 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2011-12-20.
45. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.26 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2012-01-31.
46. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.27 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2012-02-17.
47. "Mozilla Firefox 3.6.28 Release Notes". Mozilla. 2012-03-13.
48. The check is performed not inside an add-ons window (as if similar to usual add-ons), but on the Mozilla site.
49. Blizzard, Christopher (2009-10-20). "Web Open Font Format for Firefox 3.6". Hacks.mozilla.org. Retrieved 2009-12-19.
50. "Using the Java plugin with Firefox". Support.mozilla.com. Retrieved 2010-11-09.

External links

• Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Release Notes
• Mozilla.com, Mozilla Firefox homepage for end-users
• , Mozilla Firefox project page for developers
• Mozilla.com, Mozilla EULA
• Nightly.Mozilla.org, Firefox latest builds