The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday released an update to the company's heralded new web browser, version 3.0.1, with fixes for security, stability, a printing issue, and problems involving running Firefox 2 simultaneously.

The most critical security fixes address a problem whereby an attacker could run code and install software, while requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing. Other problems included the malware database not updating on first launch, and the SSL certificate exception list not being properly saved.

The update also dealt with crashes using malformed GIF files on Mac OS X, command-line URLs that launch multiple tabs when Firefox is not running, and remote code execution by overflowing the CSS reference counter.

Several stability issues addressed were not elaborated on, but one was noted in which having Firefox 2 installed alongside version 3 made the older version unstable. A printing issue was addressed, too: When you'd select a region from the middle of a web page for printing, some of the area would be cut off.

Finally, Linux users benefit from the update. For Linux installations on a PPP internet connection (dialup or DSL) the unpatched Firefox would start up in "Offline" mode.

Firefox 3.0.1 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a free download from the Mozilla Firefox site. The company said that current users of Firefox 3 will be prompted to upgrade within the next 48 hours, but that they could also receive it on demand from the program's Help menu, by choosing the "Check for updates" option.

Source : here