As announced yesterday, Mozilla have released Firefox 3.6 right as expected at 9:30 PST.

Firefox includes many new features, including:

• Support for a new type of theme called Personas
• Checks for out-of-date plugins
• Full screen support for HTML5 <video> tags
• More HTML5 element support
• Improved JavaScript speed and stability
• Plus more

A full list of changes in Firefox 3.6 can be found in the release notes.

Mozilla have also released a 2 minute video showing some of these new features.

Firefox 3.6 can be downloaded from the Firefox website, or current Firefox users can go to the Help menu and select Check for Updates.

Mozilla has pushed out a second release candidate for Firefox 3.6.

The update is said to close a security flaw, of which very little details are available.

Current Firefox 3.6 testers will receive the update automatically, or it can be downloaded from the Firefox Beta website.

Firefox 3.6 final was expected today, but is now expected on January 26th.

Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has told Germans to avoid using any version of Internet Explorer after a security vulnerability lead to attacks against Google, Adobe, and other large organisations last week.

Microsoft has hit back at claims, noting that the attacks could be avoided if the security zone settings were set to high.

“Using Internet Explorer in ‘secure mode’, as well as turning off Active Scripting, makes attacks more difficult but can not fully prevent them,” BSI said in a further statement.

Microsoft has acknowledged the vulnerability, which is present in all versions of Internet Explorer, including IE8 on Windows 7.

Microsoft is expected to release a patch in the coming weeks.

Mozilla has pushed out Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). This means the browser now contains the final set of changes and new features, and will now only concentrate on bugs that would stop the browser from being released.

Firefox 3.6 RC1 fixes almost 100 bugs since Beta 5, but there are no other new features in this release.

A list of new features in Firefox 3.6 can be found in the release notes, while the release candidate can be downloaded from the Firefox Beta website.

Firefox 3.6 is now just 1-2 weeks away from final release.

Google overnight has updated the development channel version Google Chrome, this time turning on extensions for Mac.

This is new version is in addition to the beta version, which Mac users have been able to test for the last few weeks.

Almost 1,400 extensions are currently available for Chrome users.

Mac users wanting to test out extensions can install the developer build of Google Chrome from the Chromium Developer website, noting that this is a development build and is prone to bugs.

Beta users of Google Chrome Mac will have to wait until current code migrates from the Dev to Beta channel to test out extensions.

Mozilla have pushed out two updates for Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.

The updates are merely bug fixes, resolving issues that could crash the browser. A full list of changes can be found in the Firefox 3.5.7 and Firefox 3.0.17 release notes.

The updates will be pushed out to existing Firefox users, or can be downloaded manually from the Firefox website.

Firefox Mobile RC 1 (formerly known as Fennec) is now available for Nokia’s Maemo mobile platform.

This includes devices such as the Nokia N900 and N810.

Firefox Mobile is essentially Firefox 3.5 under the hod, with a new graphical user interface for the mobile device. This means that you get the same rendering engine (supporting some HTML5 elements), the awesome bar, spell check, and a download manager.

Currently available in over 15 languages, an updated Windows Mobile version is expected in a few weeks.

A full list of changes can be found in the release notes, while the browser can be downloaded from the Firefox Mobile website.

Developer versions are also available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

With 2009 now over, it’s time to analyse web browser market share over the last 12 months.

It’s been a big year for web browsers, with Internet Explorer taking a massive loss, down from 75.18% share in December 2008, to 62.69% share in December 2009.

Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera were all big winners, ending the year up higher than they started.

Google Chrome has had such an impact that it now holds third place in the browser market, which has been held by Safari for the last number of years.

We have compiled a graph below to show you the browser movements over the last 12 months.

All data has been provided by Market Share by Net Applications.

On que, Opera have released Opera 10.50 pre-alpha to the public.

So far, the browser is showing a lot of promise, with the new Carakan JavaScrpt engine being over 7 times faster than Opera 10.

Also new in this release is the Presto 2.5 rendering engine, with greater support for HTML5 and CSS3 elements.

New graphics accelerated rendering support is also added with an updated Vega graphics engine, which will safely fall back to the CPU if need be.

Opera 10.50 also adds Windows 7 integration for PC users, and a new unified toolbar for Mac users.

Private Tab and Private Window are also new, allowing users to open a private tab or window where all history and cookies are forgotten on close.

Currently only available Mac and Windows, download links can be found in the Opera Labs.

Mozilla contributor Stephen Horlander is still hard at work, sharing his ideas for a revamped Windows 7 theme for Firefox 4.0.

According to Horlander, the expected Firefox facelift is now solely expected in Firefox 4, and not gradually through Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 4.0.

In this revision, the Application button (marked #1 on the mockup above) has been reworked to incorporate the new Windows 7 single button menus, already present in Paint and Wordpad on Windows 7.

Work has also been done on the toolbar and location bar.

More mockups and information can be found on Horlanders blog post.

Current Firefox users can download the Strata40 Firefox Theme, which gives the browser a similar appearance.