Firefox 2 Beta 1 Released
Just heard about this this morning. The latest beta release of Firefox 2 has been released. Apparently there have been reports floating around the internet in various blogs and other places that it was released before today. Not true and this is the Mozilla official release.
Again, as with all beta releases the Firefox team have put in the standard “for developers and testers” warning. If you install it be prepared to loose everything! They recommend that you back everything up, there are some extensions that will do this. In addition you will find that most if not all your extensions won’t work in the beta release.
The features that are being included look great. I especially like the inclusion of built in Phishing Protection for bogus websites it is a nice touch and typical of Firefox and their dedication to security and user protection, if only all browsers were thinking like this. Here is a list of included features in this version:
- 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
Personally, I will wait for the final version to be released. Firefox builds tend to be buggy - that’s why they are called beta! But if you are mad keen to try it out here is a link to the official beta page, let us know here at the Global Geek Podcast what you think.