Mozilla yesterday released a beta version of the Firefox 3.6 browser to fix several stability and security issues.

Firefox 3.6.2 has been released to Mozilla’s beta tester community, and includes several bug fixes such as crashes when using Adobe’s ClickMap add-on. Other problems reported by some users, such as there being no prompt to update extensions for the browser when Firefox was upgraded, have been fixed in the new version.

The beta isn’t aimed at all surfers, though changes will eventually be implemented in the full, stable version of Firefox 3.6.

You can download the Firefox 3.6.2 beta from the Mozilla website.

Firefox 3.6 was launched in January, with Firefox being the second-most popular browser after Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, though Microsoft’s dominance of the browser market is already being eroded after it was forced to offer everyone using it’s operating system the chance to switch to another browser – Opera has already reported a rise in the number of people using its browser as a consequence.

Apple has released Safari 4.0.5 to address multiple vulnerabilities in ColorSync, ImageIO, PubSub, Safari, and WebKit. These vulnerabilities may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, cause a denial-of-service condition, obtain sensitive information, or bypass security restrictions.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review Apple article HT4070 and upgrade to Safari 4.0.5 to help mitigate the risks.