| Firefox 2.0 RC 2: better, not perfect |
by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Oct. 10, 2006)
 I've been using Firefox since it split off from Mozilla back in 2002, and it's easily my favorite browser. It's safer than Internet Explorer; it's open-source, unlike Opera; and I vastly prefer its interface to those of Konqueror, Epiphany, and Safari.
So naturally, I've really been looking forward to using Mozilla Corp.'s new Firefox, version 2.
Well, it's almost here, in the form of Release Candidate 2 (RC2). But while RC2 exhibits many great improvements, there are also several... I wouldn't call them glitches, but design decisions, that I'm not crazy about.
But, first here's the good news.
The anti-phishing feature is first rate. With it working, which it is the default in this release, it automatically checks that a site really is the site that it's claiming to be, by comparing the website's information with a list of known phishing sites. If you really want to go on to the bogus site, you can also do that. Don't ask me why you'd want to, though!
Since phishing sites have grown increasingly more sophisticated in their site disguises, this is an invaluable feature. Even if you don't decide to use Firefox 2, you really should start using a browser with anti-phishing protection.
Besides simple web surfing, if you're like me, you are also reading web blogs and newsfeeds with an RSS reader. Firefox 2 has improved its handling of this, by enabling you the options of subscribing to them via a web service, a standalone RSS reader, or adding them to your default Firefox view as "Live Bookmarks." If you elect to use a web service, as I do, your default choices are Bloglines, Google Reader, and My Yahoo! You can also add-in your own favorite web-based RSS reader, such as FeedBucket.
The Session Restore feature is also darn handy. It restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from your last user session if something goes wrong. In my case, that's usually BellSouth doing something horrid to my DSL connection. It's already saved me a ton of time in my first few days of using it.
I also like the new add-ons manager. With it, I can use a single tool for managing extensions and themes. It's easy and simple, and I like easy and simple.
Most of the interface changes are quite minor. None-the-less, I can see how having toolbar buttons "glow" when you hover over them could make you just a touch quicker at the browser.
The one major interface change is that Firefox now defaults to opening links in new tabs instead of new windows. In addition, each tab has its own close tab button. If you open more tabs than can fit in a single window, you'll get left and right side arrows on the tab strip to let you scroll back and forth between your tabs.
At first, I wasn't sure I'd like this change. My PC displays tends to be filled with browser windows. But, after almost a week of use, I've decided that I like it. I haven't had any trouble switching between browser windows and tabs.
With this new interface, what I'm now doing is keeping a browser display on a specific area; say Xen virtualization, in one browser window with multiple tabs, while another Firefox display contains tabs on OpenVZ virtualization. That may not work for you, but it's doing well by me.
The new built-in spell checker doesn't do that much for me, but I can see how a blogger would love to be able to quickly check their spelling before launching their latest story. Actually, considering how horrible I am at spelling, perhaps I should reconsider the spell-checker (amen! --editor).
This version of Firefox also comes with support for JavaScript 1.7. I'm not a great fan of JavaScript, although I despise it the way I do ActiveX, but still many sites use it. I've also no doubt that many web designers will be making use of 1.7's new features, so having support for it baked in will be all for the best.
Then, there are some features that leave me underwhelmed.
Take Live Titles. Please, take Live Titles. This is a new web "feature" by which websites offer a regularly updated summary of the web page. The feature lets users create a bookmark with a "Live Title." It's small enough to fit in a bookmark label, but the idea is it's more useful than the static page title.
OK, fine, and I need this because...? I don't know about you, but if I need to know what's new on a site, I'll use its RSS feed. This seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem, and I'd just as soon that Mozilla didn't encourage it.
Now, for the bad news: the cookie manager has taken, as my friends at eWEEK Labs put it, a step backwards. Firefox, up to RC1, gave you the ability to allow cookies only from an originating web site. That option is now gone unless you manually edit the about:config file in the address bar and change the value of the network.cookie.cookieBehavior preference setting from 0 to 1.
Oh boy, a real Linux moment. To make a change in cookie-handling behavior you need to edit a config file. Oy!
(Click image to enlarge)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the idea was to get away from hand editing configuration files with these new-fangled graphical applications?
I also found, much to my surprise, that two of my favorite, no that's two of my must-have Firefox extensions, which had worked in RC1, no longer worked in RC2. These are the Google toolbar, the search tool of choice, for my money, and Google Browser Sync. For people like me with over a dozen laptops and desktops in constant use, or even if you just have one desktop and a laptop, Browser Sync is invaluable for keeping your browser settings straight between computers.
Here we have the "old" Firefox (RC1) running on Xandros. Notice the Google Browser Sync icon on the upper right, and the Google toolbar?
(Click image to enlarge)
And, here's the "new" Firefox (RC2) on SLED 10, but the Google toolbar and Sync icon are gone. They won't run -- yet -- on Firefox 2, darn it.
(Click image to enlarge)
Now, I wouldn't normally bring this kind of thing up. As sure as taxes and the Phoenix Cardinals losing football games, Firefox extensions break with a new version. But, I am troubled that there are significant changes being made to the browser between release candidates.
At this point in Firefox 2's development, the only changes that should be considered are bug-fixes. And, for that matter, even the fixes should only be made for show-stopping bugs, at this point. Now, maybe these modifications were necessary. I don't know, but I do know that I'm going to be looking carefully at Firefox 2 final when it comes out. I don't want to find any more surprises.
If you can't wait, you can download RC2 from Mozilla here. However, with the final version coming out sometime around Halloween, as I understand it, you might want to wait for the last word on Firefox 2.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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