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The latest update to Mac OS X forced Mozilla.org to release yet another release candidate of its next-generation Firefox 3 browser.

Release Candidate 3 of Mozilla Firefox 3 has been issued with a workaround for a bug introduced in the latest 10.5.3 update of Mac OS X. According to Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug-tracking and management system, the problem causes the operating system to hang or crash at start-up or shutdown if an application tries to open the VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin file, which is a browser plugin included in OS X and accessed by Firefox under certain circumstances.

Reports said that Mozilla developers reported the problem to Apple and that the company's engineers replied with tacit acknowledgement of the issue: "After further investigation, it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering." The open-source team, however, decided to workaround the bug, rather than wait for an official fix from Apple, which is traditionally very mum about bugs, security issues, and other internal development issues.

The need to do another release candidate won't delay the roll-out of Firefox 3.0, said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's product lead. "Thanks to the very, very minimal nature of the patch, and that it was in OS X-only code, we don't expect any impact to the release date,"

The Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 Release Notes contain general information about the improvements in Firefox 3. Technical information about the specific OS X 10.5.3 VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin issue can be found in bug 436575. Firefox 3 RC3 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux can be downloaded here.