Firefox 2 is out
Hot on the heels of the IE7 release is Firefox 2. One could technically say that FF is catching up with IE with improved phishing and search integration. And the design of the new Firefox site is very wispy. Again, much like the IE branding. And much of the new functionality in Firefox 2 was functionality that was available via plug-ins already. Any further enhancements to the CSS or DOM support are set to appear in the next release.
Anyways, the new look is nice. I find the gray shadow underneath the tabs a little overpowering but the slight glassiness of the buttons and the tabs make the application feel a little less drab. Firefox is still my favourite browser out on the market and would likely take Microsoft another year to actually come close to catching up to what Firefox offers today.
So, go out and download Firefox 2, if you haven't already!
Conversation
I like this announcement better than the IE7 one last week :)
Don't forget that FF2 does has auto spell check for text/input boxes, that's a big one! It's unfortunate that they chose not to just utilize the existing spell checker built-in to Macs though.
These are exciting times... they are also pretty intensive on how much testing there is to do (with two versions of IE, Safari, Opera, and now two versions of Firefox).
Any idea on how long the turnover to FF2 should be ?
Well, because the rendering engine really hasn't changed, I think there isn't much testing that would need to be done over and above what was in FF1.5.
Ooh, and the inline spell checker in FF2 is pretty slick.
I downloaded a version yesterday, and it has been somewhat buggy, so maybe I should download the actual release. I really like the ability to re-organize the tabs. I have been doing this in safari, and have wanted it in FF (especially when using the web developer extension).
I love FF for so many reasons, but I still feel that Safari is faster for daily browsing. For using any google apps (webmasters, analytics, reader, etc) and for debugging and testing - FF fits the bill perfectly.
Ok, now back to downloading a stable version...
Nate. How do you re-organize tabs in Safari? I'm running the latest version and it's a no go. I assume this is a plug-in?
I really like Firefox 2.0 thus far, but as with every new Firefox release, my extensions and themes not working is incredicly annoying (oh dear god i want my cssviewer :( )
@ Nate: I thought FF1.5 could reorganize tabs already? I'm pretty sure I've been doing that for almost a year now. It is a nice feature though! Maybe I'm thinking of something else...
Yep, add-ons (they seem to have renamed extensions to add-ons, for some unknown reason) will take a little time to update, but one of my favourites, SessionSaver, now seems to be defunct, as the features come built-in.
I'm not too keen on the default theme, but perhaps that's just because I'm so used to the previous version.
I still don't see any reason for switching back to IE.
Re: my previous post - hadn't realised that add-ons appears to be the collective name for extensions & themes.
@Nate: By "re-organizing the tabs" do you mean that you can slide them to different positions? If so ... you could do that with FF1.5.
@Fredrik: That's a nice little extension to get a quick look at the css.
I just miss one thing on FF2(Mac) which is that a long click used to show context menu on FF1.5(Mac). It was only the browse does this for me, not Safari, Camino, Opera..
yeah, i like the new features on FF2 but it isnt that great an increase from previous versions. I cant see myself using ie7 in the near futire though.. partly just because i have got so used to Firefox now.. it looks shiny and it has some nice improvements from the developers point of view... but there still feels like there is something wrong with it. I like my Firefox estentions too much i suppose...