Firefox 4 release hits 3.5 million downloads in hours

Mozilla has registered over 3.5 million downloads of Firefox 4 just hours after releasing the final build of new browser.

Firefox 4 was made officially available for download today, and Mozilla has released final code for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in more than 80 languages. Versions for the Android and Maemo operating system are expected shortly.

An online counter has been set up for new downloads and the total looks likely to break five million by the end of the day.

"Firefox 4 is the fastest Firefox yet. With dramatic speed and performance advancements across the board, Firefox is between two and six times faster than previous releases," blogged Mozilla.

"Major enhancements to the JavaScript engine make everything from start-up time to page load speed to graphics and JavaScript performance screaming fast in Firefox."

The browser comes with the Do Not Track privacy feature, as well as tools to synchronise bookmarks over multiple systems and mobile devices, as well as an improved add-ons manager and an updated user interface that makes more use of tabbing to make the browser more customisable.

Support for the new software has easily outstripped that shown for Microsoft's latest Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser, which clocked up two million downloads in its first 24 hours.

However, Firefox pushes out upgrade options to users rather than waiting for them to download new software like Microsoft, and IE9 will not work on most of the Windows PCs in operation today so is of limited appeal.