A spokeswoman for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which maintains the open-source browser code, said the Release Candidate 3 (RC3) version of Firefox 2.0, which was posted for download on Monday (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9004174&intsrc=news_list) has been doing well among users and is ready to be finalized as Firefox 2.0 for distribution.

"RC3 is substantially the same as the final release," the spokeswoman said. The final version will be branded as Firefox 2.0 and will be available for free download on its own Mozilla Web page sometime on Tuesday afternoon. "That's definitely scheduled," she said.

The news comes days after Microsoft Corp. launched its first full upgrade of its Internet Explorer browser, IE7, (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9004205) on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation said that RC3 would become the final version of the Firefox 2.0 browser "if there are no showstoppers."

The first release candidate for Firefox 2.0 was available Sept. 26, while the second was released Oct. 6 as developers sought additional input and bug reports from users.