Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Firefox 2 is out

Download link for the PC version here.

Doesn't seem to be wildly different, but tabs are easier to use - I've usually preferred opening new windows rather than tabs, but I may make a conscious effort to use tabs now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

New windows are for suckers.

New version's a bit speedier, the built-in spell checker is nice, and I like how it remembers the tabs you had open and what was in them if your "session" is interrupted.

Nice to see too that they're adding some of the features to IE 7 that everyone else had five years ago. Might not be so painful when I need to help someone out at school or work, and they're in IE.

Lord Kitchener's Own said...

I don't want to plug for IE7, cause I know everyone hates IE, but let me ask Firefox experts two questions.

Does Firefox have the "multiple homepage" feature in version 2.0 that now appears in IE7? I really like that a lot, but I haven't found it in the new Firefox yet (I'm sure it's coming soon if it's not there now).

The other thing I like a lot in IE7 is the ability to open all the tabs simultaneously (essentially as large thumbnails) so you can browse your open tags visually, rather than simply by title bar. Is there something like this in Firefox yet?

I know I shouldn't like IE, and IE7 had such a problem with my security software at home that I had to do a System Restore (so, for now, no IE7 on my home computer). These two features really excited me though, so if they're hiding in Firefox somewhere, I'd really like to know!

john said...

There does seem to be a "multiple home page" support in FF2 - if you "set current page" as the home while you've got multiple tabs open, the browser (I think?) pre-loads all of the tabs on start up.

I don't use the feature, so I don't know for sure. Is this what you mean?

As for the tab thumbnails, you can download an add-on (Tab Catalog or Showcase) to do that. I imagine it will be built in to FF by the time 2.2 rolls out.

I would point out that Zdnet is giving FF2 higher marks for security vs. IE7. Given that you mentioned problems with your computer, however, decency compels me to mention that Zdnet found problems uninstalling FF.