Hip-hip-hooray! Firefox fans have reason to celebrate as the 3.6 release candidate is now available — and there’s a lot more going on than a seemingly minor decimal point update would lead you to believe.

Lifehacker has been keeping tabs on Firefox 3.6 since the first alpha release was made available, and has plenty of great things to say about it. In fact, despite what appears to be a modest update based on the version number is actually a speed demon, ranking second only to recent Google Chrome builds in their speed & performance tests.

In addition to overall speed — which includes JavaScript and startup time as well as page rendering — Firefox 3.6 includes instant themes, courtesy of a Personas gallery. Simply hover over a theme and you can see instantly how it will look in your browser, then click to apply it and it’s yours. Personas can be managed from the Add-Ons menu like other Firefox extensions.

If you start up Firefox 3.6 with outdated plug-ins, the program will not only notify you, but provide a friendly link to update it. Also, video streaming in Ogg or other open formats can now be played in full screen.

Developers will love that Firefox 3.6 now accepts and downloads smaller-sized Web Open Font Format fonts, which allows sites to show you text in the way it’s intended, and at a much faster speed.

There’s more to love in the 3.6 release notes, but why not point your browser to Mozilla’s site and download it right now? It’s absolutely free (as always) and available for Mac, Windows and Linux systems. Or if you need more proof, take a couple minutes and hit the YouTube video below to see what it’s all about!

Image courtesy of Mozilla