Saturday, July 01, 2006

Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 Released!

One of the most favorite browser in the world has released the latest beta version. The Mozilla Corp launched it on last Wednesday, signaling that its major upgrade to the popular alternative browser is inching ever closer to release.

List of new features:

* Built in Phishing Protection.
* Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
* Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
* Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
* Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
* Inline spell checking in text boxes
* Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
* New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
* Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
* New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
* New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
* Support for JavaScript 1.7
* Support for client-side session and persistent storage
* Extended search plugin format
* Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
* Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

Review: The installation went pretty smooth. The start-up of the program is pretty reasonable when you consider the fact that firefox's memory hog. It also has couple new looks. The most significant differences are the look of the tabs and the new phishing filter feature. On overall, I'll give the rating 8 / 10.