If you've been holding your breath waiting for Mozilla to release the final build of Firefox 3, you might want to take a break before you pass out. It looks like we're going to have at least one more release candidate before Firefox 3 final is released.

Firefox 3 RC2 will likely be released sometime in June. The update will address several dozen bugs found in Firefox 3 RC1, including one widely reported bug that can cause Firefox to essentially render some Linux systems temporarily unusable.

We won't know whether there will be a Firefox 3 RC3 until some time after RC2 is released and beta testers have had a chance to kick the tires a bit. For the most part, Firefox 3 RC1 perfectly usable. It renders many pages faster than Firefox 2, has vastly improved bookmark and add-on managers, and has a multi-purpose location bar. But if you're not the sort of person who likes to rely on beta software (or release candidate software as the case may be) for day to day usage, you may want to wait another month or two or more until Firefox 3 final is released.

[via Mozilla Links]

Mozilla has pushed out the first release candidate for Firefox 3. That means this version should be more stable than any of the betas that have been released over the last year, but there may still be some bugs to work out. If you want to be absolutely certain you won't lose settings or mess up your system somehow, you might want to hold off on downloading Firefox 3 until a final build is released. That said, we've been playing with early builds of Firefox 3 for months, and it's way faster than Firefox 2 and includes some nifty new features like improved bookmark management and a more useful location bar.

Firefox 3 RC1 looks and feels a lot like Firefox 3 beta 5, but there are a few changes:

• Changes to the JavaScript engine and optimizations for web applications like Gmail and Zoho Office
• Improvements to the user interface
• Changes and fixes for bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and location bar autocomplete
• Security improvements

You can check out the complete list of changes in the release notes, or you can just go ahead and download the release candidate. Firefox 3 is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows.