Firefox 11 available for download now, ahead of official release.

The highly popular Firefox browser has reached its next milestone, version 11. Now, the browser isn’t going to be officially out till Mozilla says it is, but going by the history, Mozilla dumps the final release on the FTP a day or two before the official release date. The latest version 11 binaries are now available for download, but if you prefer to use the auto-update on the browser, you’ll have to wait a little longer before that happens. The official release date for Firefox 11 is set as the 13th of March, 2012. The last major stable release was Firefox 10 back in late January. Eversince the rapid release cycle was adopted, Mozilla has been releasing Firefox updates in quick succession, but it also means that only few changes are made, but these are distinct ones.

Firefox 11 brings a few major changes. One of the new features is the ability to import settings from Google’s Chrome browser. Those Firefox fans who moved to Chrome and want to move back to Firefox, should have things easier now. Another great feature, if you’re used to Firefox on different PCs is the ability to synchronize add-ons. This saves users the trouble of having to install the same add-on different PCs. There are optimizations made to the user interface and support for a protocol SPDY, which is said to offer faster page loading times. There are, of course a ton of bug fixes as well as some tools for developers, including an interesting one called the Page Inspector 3D, which allows users using WebGL hardware to view a web page closely in 3D.

The Mozilla FTP server finally has the release builds of Firefox 11 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Neowin has the download links for all the variants. When Firefox 11 is released, Firefox 12, which is expected to be released on the 24th of April, a little more than a month from now will switch to the beta channel and Firefox 13 to the Aurora channel.