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Mozilla just announced that Weave, its official synchronization tool for Firefox, has just hit version 1.0 and is now generally available. Weave is a free browser add-on that can seamlessly sync bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open browser tabs between different computers that run Firefox. Weave also runs on Mozilla's mobile browser for the Nokia N900.

Last week, YouTube announced they will begin supporting the upcoming web standard HTML5 which allows videos to be viewed without an Adobe Flash plugin. Those who wanted to play around with the new HTML5-enabled website were directed to a separate experimental site called TestTube. However, noted the YouTube blog post, only Chrome, Safari, and IE users could give the new site a try. Firefox was notably absent from the list.

Mozilla announced today that the final version of Firefox 3.6 is now available for download, and we're told the new Firefox is 20% faster than the last version with several new features to boot.

We've taken a look at all of the release candidates and now that the final version is here, we're hoping it does everything Mozilla says it can.

Plans to Release it as a Minor Update to 3.6 Instead

Earlier today, Computerworld broke the news that Mozilla plans to "dump" Firefox 3.7 from its schedule and change the way it develops and releases its browser. We talked to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, about these changes. Beltzner noted that Mozilla isn't really "dumping" version 3.7. Instead, Mozilla took a closer look at its development roadmap and realized that there was simply no need to release Firefox 3.7 because the Firefox team now plans to release the most important update to 3.7 as a regular security update to Firefox 3.6.

Mozilla has made the first release candidate for Firefox 3.6 available for download this morning, following a recent announcement that further releases would be delayed.

Firefox 3.6, codename "Namoroka", looks to improve startup time and general responsiveness, among other issues.

If you want to help Mozilla to make Firefox better but you are not a developer, here is your chance. Earlier this year, Mozilla announced the launch of Test Pilot, the organization's new distributed usability lab. Test pilots will be enlisted in various usability tests and will be some of the first to see some of Mozilla's ideas for new user interfaces and Mozilla Labs products. We first wrote about Test Pilot when it was just a "still-in concept platform." Now, however, you can download the Test Pilot add-on for Firefox 3.5 here and begin to help Mozilla make Firefox even better.

Earlier this morning, Mozilla released the fourth beta version of Firefox 3.6. Besides over 140 bug fixes, the new beta also introduces support for HTML5's local file handling API. This feature gives web apps the ability to access and handle local files selected by the user. A photo site that implements this feature can now work with images locally, for example. You don't have to upload your images to the site - instead, the web app can just manipulate the photo through the browser locally and an upload is only necessary if you want to store the image remotely.

Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developers Conference earlier this month. One of the unique features of IE9 that Microsoft announced at that time was hardware acceleration for its browser. Thanks to technologies like Direct2D and Direct Write that are available for Windows7, Windows developers can use a computer's graphics card to render websites faster. While Microsoft is still working on this project behind closed doors, however, you can already download a Direct2D-enabled pre-release version of Firefox 3.7 today.

Mozilla just launched a new directory for Jetpack add-ons. Jetpack is Mozilla's newest technology for building Firefox extensions with Javascript, HTML and CSS. Mozilla announced a major update to Jetpack yesterday. Today's launch of the new gallery will finally make it easier for Jetpack developers to showcase their plugins and for users to find interesting and useful new plugins to try. The new gallery has a lot of extra features that the Firefox add-on library doesn't currently have, including the ability to showcase new plugins with video demos.

Hey, Firefox, kids who were freshmen in college when you started now have pointless internships in big cities and colossal amounts of student debt. Congratulations! You're officially old by Internet standards.

You've hit the one billion downloads mark and captured a truly significant percentage of Internet browser users. And you've got a hardcore community of open-source developers and fans who contribute to the thousands of extensions, plugins, and skins that make the user experience so customizable. But most importantly, you helped pave the way for the creation and mainstream proliferation of a bunch of nifty alternative browsers and provided impetus for aggressive improvements to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.