In the race for the fastest browser, Mozilla is releasing Firefox 3 on June 17^th. With more than 1 million people already pledging to download the new software on its release day, the campaign dubbed “Download Day“ could set a new Guinness World Record as the most downloaded software within 24 hours of launch.

On the Mozilla site, users are asked to pledge that they will download the new browser on the release date. So far, the United States is in the lead by having nearly 200,000 pledges to download. Surprisingly, in second place is Poland with nearly 80,000 pledges. Some of the other marketing tools include inviting users to plan a download fest in your school or office, or even joining groups supporting the browser on social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo.

The release of Firefox 3 is promising over 15,000 new features including better security with malware protection, productivity with session restore and full zoom, and the promise of over 5000 add-ons.

Firefox is also keen on winning the battle for fastest browser and the JavaScript engine seems to be the primary battlefield as the scripting interpreter optimization directly achieves speed gains in Web 2.0 sites and Web applications. Both Firefox 3 and Apple’s Safari 4 are competing in the new JavaScript implementations. Apple has set the release of Safari 4 in conjunction with the release of the Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Microsoft is lagging in the speed race with its Internet Explorer 8 beta which is set possibly for a final release at the end of the year. Although it claims to be better and faster than the Internet Explorer 7 version, so far it is lacking the new JavaScript engine that is available from its rivals Mozilla and Apple new releases.
According to the latest Net Applications Market Share for browsers, Internet Explorer however leads with 73.75%, followed by Firefox with 18.41% and Safari with 6.25%. It will be interesting to see if the new releases will cut more into the Internet Explorer’s large lead in the browser market.