Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 has now finally been launched after a few days of information leakage and download links for Mozilla’s longed sequel to Firefox 1.5. Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 is not the first test version of FF 2.0, but it is the first to be officially released even if Mozilla doesn’t recommend any other people than developers and tester to install the browser, simply because it is not a final version. But this Beta 1 version is suppose to be much more tuned than the Alpha versions we’ve reported about earlier and the browser brings a whole bunch of interesting news. FF 2.0 Beta 1 is feature complete, thus it’s all there now and there is nothing that will be missed before the final version.
Among others it has integrated a phising filter and built in spell checker, but there is more than that. Microsummaries is a feature worth mentioning as it allows Firefox to automiatcally create short summarizes of a webpage’s content and store it in a bookmark beside the regular site title, which makes it a lot easier to keep track of what your bookmarks contain. A complete list of the new features with Firefox 2. Beta 1 can be found below;
- 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
More information about Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 can be found in Mozilla’s release notes. The browser can be downloaded from our file archive below:
