Mozilla Firefox 2.0
Published on October 24, 2006 in FirefoxOn the heels of Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla has released the newest version of their Firefox browser. Since the first release of Firefox the browser landscape has changed dramatically, with new versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera resulting in a new sense of competition and browser improvements. Firefox 2.0 continues this trend with several new features and performance enhancements to help it stay at the front of pack.
The Firefox User Interface
When loading Firefox 2 for the first time the thing that stands out the most is the shiner look and feel. Firefox’s buttons are now glossy, the ‘Go’ and ‘Search’ buttons have been integrated with their respective location and search bar, and the active tab is much easier to distinguish. While generally an improvement the icons could be made cleaner and more distinctive, epically when using the large icon view. Additionally, the Options windows and Add-Ons windows have received a update. They are now much cleaner and simpler to use.
Search
Firefox’s search capabilities have been given a major upgrade. Like ‘Google Complete’ Firefox now has search completion. As soon as you start typing, potential phrases show up that you can choose from. To help you add search engines to Firefox it will also detect a search plugin offered by a web site, the search engines list button turns blue when a new search plugin is detected. Finally, a new search engine manager is included with Firefox. This manager can remove and sort installed search plugins and deactivate suggestions for search engines.
Security
Protection against fraudulent and/or fake web sites, called anti-phishing, has been added to Firefox 2. Whenever Firefox suspects a fraudulent site an alert will pop up with the option to ignore it the warning, report the site, or go somewhere else. The suspected web site can be checked against a local black list (the default) which is updated periodically or against a remote provider. Additionally, support for SSL version 2 has been dropped in favor of SSL version 3 in the latest version of the browser.
Session restore
In Firefox 2, if the browser detects an abnormal closing the next time Firefox is started up it prompts you to choose whether you want to restore the last session or start a new one. A restored session will bring back all tabs you previously had opened, basically restoring your browser to the state it was in before the crash.
Spell Checking
Firefox 2 includes a spell checker which can automatically check any text entered in multiline text boxes for a wrong spelling. Like Microsoft Word, and others, any word not found in the currently selected dictionary is highlighted with a red underline. Right-clicking on a misspelled word will bring up a prompt with options to replace the word with a suggested word. Single line text boxes are not automatically checked for spelling. A check can be forced by right-clicking on the text box and selecting ‘Spell Check’ this field.
Tabbed Browsing
Tabbed browsing has been one of Firefox’s calling cards and version 2 brings further improvements to tabbed browsing. Each tab now has its own close button and one can easily switch between tabs via a pulldown list of all open tabs. Firefox 2 also allows recovery of a closed tab (in the History menu select the Recently Closed Tabs option). The tab that is restored will reappear as it was right before it was closed.
Firefox 2 also has support for tab overflow handling. A minimum size has been defined for any tab that makes each tab description easier to read. Once a set number of tabs has been reached scroll buttons will be added to both sides of the tab bar to navigate between tabs.
Web feeds
With Firefox 2 Mozilla has improved the browser’s integration with RSS and RSS readers. Navigating to a web page containing an feed will bring up a RSS icon in the URL bar that lights up. Clicking the icon will give a choice to subscribe to the feed using either LiveBookmarks or one of several popular online readers like Bloglines or Google Reader. Feeds are also displayed nicely formatted instead of the raw code that was shown before.
Other Notes
Some Firefox extensions will not currently work with Firefox 2. For many extensions this is because the list of Firefox versions that the extension supports does not include Firefox 2. Windows users can use the unofficial Nightly Tester Tools to force Firefox to believe that these extensions are compatible with the new version of Firefox. With themes you may not to be as lucky. With the user interface changes to Firefox 2 if a theme does not support the latest Firefox version it is not likely to play nice with Firefox 2.
If you would like to test Firefox 2 but do not want to overwrite Firefox 1.5 on your computer there is an easy way to test the new version of Firefox. Portable Apps has a version of Firefox that will run from a USB drive or any other folder on your computer. Just download and install Portable Firefox to have a new Firefox 2 on your computer that will not mess with any of your Firefox 1.5 settings.
Finally if you do not like the new default theme try out the Winstripe theme which change the icons back to the 1.5 icons and removes skinned stuff to give the default OS look.
Conclusion
Firefox 2.0 does not have many new features but this release is a solid, welcome upgrade focusing on improved performance, stability, and security. It would be nice too see future versions of the browser have better printing support, a built-in RSS reader, and an improved bookmarking system. Most of the new Firefox improvements and features are subtle, but good productivity boosters. Current Firefox users should be happy with new release. Current IE users who are not happy with IE7 should take a look at this new version of Firefox. Firefox currently has most of the updates that IE7 possess and without the major changes to the layout and interface.
