Mozilla aims to make Firefox 3 a record breaker. It wants the release of the next version of its flagship open source browser to be accompanied by a record for the most software downloads in a single 24-hour period.

Download Day – as Mozilla dubs it – will begin the minute Firefox 3 is generally available and continue for 24 hours. Ahead of this release, expected in mid-to-late June, Mozilla has set up a website (spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord). This encourages people to organise Download Day parties, to run around collecting sign-up pledges at their university or place of work, and to place Download Day buttons on their websites.

Firefox 3 is based on Gecko 1.9, an updated layout engine. The browser features a cleaner layout, better bookmark handling and more stability. And it’s faster.

Quote from The Register

I’ll be there downloading my copy, my alarm is set…

Already been using the RC2 at work and have RC1 on Ubuntu at home. RC2 seems a little more stable than RC1 (to be expected, since they are meant to have fixed the 10 ‘critical’ bugs in RC1) but both feel a lot smoother and faster to respond. Looks like Microsoft are going to respond with IE8, pretty quickly after IE7 has been released (actually it has been over a year now) but from the betas IE8 is going to be another slow, memory chomping beast, not to mention Microsofts refusal to stick to the same web standards as everyone else, making my job a nightmare!