Various outlets are reporting that Firefox 3.5 will land on your computers tomorrow, June 30. This is exciting news in the land of browsers. It’s been almost a year since we’ve seen a full release from Mozilla. Originally scheduled to just be an update, bringing the version number to 3.1, Mozilla has since revised the scheme to signal the significance of all the new features being brought to the table. By the way, did you notice the new logo?

Firefox 3.5 has unparalled support for HTML 5, which will support a more robust offline experience. This may sound ironic for a web browser, but as more applications move towards the web “" think Google Gears to access your Gmail and Zoho documents on a plane “" it will be important to be able to access your documents and tools whether or not you have an active Internet connection.

Another important feature is the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. While Mozilla was unable to prepare this rendering engine for its 3.0 release, the engine is finally ready this time, bringing with it snappier JavaScript handling. We’ve been test driving the betas and release candidates the whole way through, and we love what we see “" online mail interfaces like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are quick and responsive, along with many other AJAX heavy sites.

Of course, there are many other numerous tweaks behind the scenes which speed the entire browser and make it a more stable platform. Depending on who’s counting, Firefox controls between 20-25% browser share behind Microsoft’s behemoth Internet Explorer. While this release has nothing flashy to convert more new users, Firefox has been steadily gaining browser share with every passing day, and a better, updated browser will do nothing to slow it down. Head over to get Firefox tomorrow.

Microsoft is losing ground after Internet Explorer lost seven percent of its hold on the web browsing market in the last year. This adds to the pressure of Windows Vista, which is only used by less than 15 percent of PC users, according to Internet research groups.

Jand the IT Productivity Center recently released a white paper finding that IE’s marketshare fell to 58.5 percent in August versus 65.48 percent last August and about 83 percent in 2005.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser remained a distant, yet rising second with almost 19 percent of the market. Google Desktop has captured about 4 percent, and some Netscape users remain, despite the fact that AOL dropped it months ago.

“Both Vista and Netscape show that large companies make huge blunders in technology,” said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco. ”In the case of Microsoft, they no longer count on moving users to new products as quickly as they want.  Time Warner’s short-sighted decision to abandon Netscape shows technology decisions are long-term ones, and companies that want to create value in that market need to look beyond quarter-to- quarter earnings.  But the real story is the continued erosion of Microsoft’s market share.”

A summary of Janco’s browser market share data can be found on their website and the IT Productivity Center’s website.

Mozilla Messaging, the new mail focused subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, announced Monday that it has begun operations.

Mozilla Messaging will initially work towards developing Thunderbird 3, which Mozilla says will “deliver significant improvements, notably integrated calendaring, better search and enhancements to the overall user experience.”

Like the free, open source web browser Firefox, Thunderbird is an open source email application built on the same concept.

“We’re excited to renew the focus of our open source community on the future of Thunderbird,” said David Ascher, CEO of Mozilla Messaging. “Every one of us is committed to building a great email product that people will love to use and that serves as the foundation for choice in a critical area of Internet software.”

Mozilla Messaging is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and will be staffed by a small development team from around the world. On its board of directors are CEO David Ascher, Christopher Beard, vice president and general manager of Mozilla Labs and Marten Mickos, CEO of open source database vendor MySQL AB.

“Thunderbird email is a vital part of the Mozilla project which brings freedom to hundreds of millions of internet users worldwide,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. “By joining the board of Mozilla Messaging, I hope to help the world communicate better.”