It’s time again to ogle and fawn over Firefox with it’s newfound 2.0-ness.
This is a good upgrade. Nothing monumentally better than 1.5, but it’s cool to have real-time spell check.
Firefox 2.0 boasts new anti-phishing technology, better searching, and better usability. For me, it is worth upgrading. I think new users may want to wait for a few fixes before giving Firefox a try. Here’s my rundown:
The memory leaks noted in versions 1.x are not resolved. This is frustrating, to say the least. I was counting on this being fixed in a future release.
There is an issue with random crashes and freezing. This is more heartbreaking than anything else. Freezing is a problem I am more comfortable associating with Microsoft. I know that’s not entirely rational, but I have never had a problem with Mozilla/Firefox and random crashes. It has been extremely rare on the systems I use.
Strangely, the colors/theme is a lot like IE 7. Not that it matters, but I felt like bringing it up. Also, there may be some CSS issues on certain websites and this is probably because of old IE fixes.
Most importantly, I think for the average user, is not to trust the anti-phishing technology to protect you from suspect websites. The filter doesn’t catch all the bad guys, so don’t assume you aren’t being duped.
These issues will, by and large, be addressed with updates to 2.0, especially the security vulnerabilities. I think the important thing is to have faith in Mozilla. Don’t be afraid to upgrade if you’re already using Firefox 1.x. New users, you might want to wait until the freezing problem is fixed, to avoid unnecessary hair and/or fingernail loss.
Ok, I’m done griping. On to some things I really love about 2.0:
- Inline Spell Check
- Improved JavaScript and Add-on handling
- Live Titles for better bookmarking
- Better Web Feed handling
And my all time favorite feature:
- Browsing Session and Closed Tab resume!
Because even without random freezing and crashing, I tend to screw things up often enough to need this kind of restore feature.
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1 That’s Me Productions, Inc. | This is what we think of Firefox 2.0 // Nov 21, 2006 at 1:15 pm
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