Mozilla has pushed back the release of the first Firefox 3.6 beta by another week, but when Firefox 3.6 beta 1 does arrive it will include support for several new Windows 7 features. Currently the schedule calls for the first beta of Firefox 3.6 to arrive on October 21, one day before Microsoft's official release of Windows 7.
If you just can't wait another week and would like to start testing now, there is a pre-beta build of Firefox 3.6 available with some of the new Windows 7 features included.
The big Windows 7 news in Firefox 3.6 is support for Aero Peek tab previews -- the page and tab previews available in the Windows 7 task bar. As with other Win 7 apps, hovering your mouse over Firefox's task bar icon will pop up previews of all your Firefox windows and tabs, making it quicker and easier to navigate between them.
Also due to arrive when the final version of 3.6 ships is support for Windows 7 jump lists. The jump lists can be accessed by right clicking on the Firefox task bar icon, which gives you access to a list of your most frequently visited websites, buttons to create a new window or tab and the option to "pin" Firefox to the task bar.
Firefox 3.6 will also offer a number of speed improvements for Windows 7 and other operating systems as well, along with support for fullscreen, open source video and more HTML5 and CSS 3 improvements. For more details on what's coming in Firefox 3.6, check out our coverage of the alpha release.
Firefox 3.6 is expected to ship some time before the end of 2009.
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