Mozilla, who still plans to release Firefox 3.5 by the end of the month, took one step closer to that goal on Friday by finally making available the first Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate (RC). Prior to Friday, lingering bugs had forced Mozilla to delay the RC rollout on more than one occasion.

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 RC sports improved tools for controlling private data, better performance and stability thanks to the new Tracemonkey JavaScript engine, support for native JSON and web worker threads, improvements to the Gecko layout engine for faster content rendering, and more.

If you've already installed Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, you should receive an offer to update to the RC automatically. If not, try using the "Check for Updates" option under the "Help" menu.

Starting yesterday, MSDN and TechNet subscribers have been able to download the Release Candidate (RC) for Windows 7, Microsoft's upcoming operating system. This latest version represents the final phases of development and is geared towards giving hardware and software partners a headstart in coding device drivers and services.

"Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7," said Bill Veghte, senior VP for the Windows business at Microsoft. "We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows. We have more partner support than we've ever had for an RC and are pleased to say that the Windows 7 RC has hit the quality and compatibility bar for enterprises to start putting it through its paces and testing in earnest."

That should come as good news to everyone who plans on upgrading once Windows 7 starts shipping. By contrast, Vista's release was the polar opposite to what Microsoft is claiming we can expect out of Windows 7. Driver issues, particularly with Nvidia hardware, plagued Vista's release, as did several performance hampering bugs.

If you're not an MSDN or TechNet subscriber, you still won't have to wait long to get your hands on the RC. Microsoft says it will make Windows 7 RC available to the general public on May 5, which is next Tuesday.