Mozilla Firefox 0.9 (code-named “One Tree Hill”) has been released! Grab it from the main Firefox page, or from the mozilla.org Firefox FTP directory itself (where you can find the zip version, if you don’t like the installer). You can also get the torrent.

Noteworthy in this release are:

• a new default theme, Winstripe (screenshot courtesy of Neil Turner), that replaces the old Qute theme (a subject of much acrimony, as well as dislike and praise alike)
• extension manager
• theme manager
• update notification for Firefox, extensions and themes
• a far more complete browser migration tool that imports everything from bookmarks to cookies and autocomplete data from other browsers
• a smaller file size (for the installer version only) of 4.7MB thanks to 7-zip compression
• ability to delete individual autocomplete results (using Shift-Delete)

A Mozilla Update site has also been launched and lists extensions and themes that implement the new extension and theme API for 0.9. This will be the “go to” site for extensions and themes in the future, being the “official” extension and theme website.

Firefox 0.9 is a feature-complete release, meaning that the next release, 1.0, will not contain any new major features. Bug-fixing is the key activity between 0.9 and 1.0, as evident in the Mozilla Firefox Roadmap. Interestingly, release 1.0 is code-named “Phoenix” – and so it shall be reborn.