October 28th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
I have been using the new Firefox 2 browser for the past couple of days now. Although I am not overly wow’d by some of the new built in features (only because I had similar extensions for it in the old version 1.5), there are some new features that I am thankful for. Here is my take on the new browser…
1) Installation
It upgraded flawlessly, imported all my bookmarks, plugins, extensions and browser settings without any problems. I loved the fact that there was an automatic installation feature that checked for plugin/ extension compatibility, notified me of the ones that had available upgrades and even allowed me to upgrade it before continuing with the installation process. Fortunately only 2 out of my 14 extensions were incompatible. :-)
2) Upgraded tab and Built in session restore feature (i.e. if Windows crashed, you can relaunch Firefox with all tabs intact)
Using the Tab mix plus extension in the the previous 1.5 version, I have seen and used this type of feature before - so it is nothing new to me. I do have to familiarize myself with using it in Firefox 2 as many of the Tab mix plus type features are present in Firefox 2 but located differently in the options menu.
E.g. The Tab mix plus feature of saving different sessions of tabs and choosing which ones you want to load is the Firefox 2’s equivalent of saving the tab sessions as bookmarks. You can then reload tab sessions by choosing the relevant bookmark.
Two things I miss from the Tab mix plus extension is the ability to choose any of the saved tab sessions on starting up Firefox and the ability to put a new tab shortcut on the left side of the tab bar (so that you don’t need to use the standard right click -> New tab function). Currently Firefox 2 only has options to load the last saved tab session, a new window or a blank page.
The close tab button on each tab is a very handy feature and am glad they incorporated it. I like the fact that the close tab feature is only present when you are on the current active tab, thus preventing accidental closing of tabs.
3) Ability to reopen a previously closed tab using the hot keys Ctrl-Shift-T
Being a fast fingered mouse clicker, I often tend to accidentally close tabs. This feature is useful for people like me although I would have liked to have the option to open more than just the previously closed tab.
4) Spell check
THIS is the sole reason why I chose to upgrade to Firefox 2. Common dictionary words are checked, with misspellings identified with a squiggly red line. I now don’t need to type my blog articles in MS Word to take advantage of the spell checker there. The spell check works with every form, comment area, blog and forum you are typing from within Firefox.
One drawback I find with the dictionary is that the spell checker doesn’t recognize some words as MS Word’s dictionary does - it seems to me that it is not as powerful and as smart. The dictionary database certainly needs a little improvement or at least linked to a dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster or another big dictionary provider. However, words can be added into the dictionary and it is way better than not having it at all. Users from other countries can be comforted in the fact that you can install dictionaries for other languages and English versions to suit your country (Canadian English, British English etc.).
Now if only they would incorporate a grammar check and thesaurus like MS Word! ;-)
5) Live titles
A very cool ingenious feature - Live Titles allows Web sites to stream updated data to your bookmarks. You can add the Live Titles functionality to the Merriam-Webster dictionary site, for example, and once you have done so, when you bookmark a page, you can choose the Live Title option to display the word of the day in your bookmark. When you drop down the bookmark menu or open the bookmark side panel, you’ll see the Merriam-Webster logo followed by the word of the day. For news sites such as the BBC’s, you’ll see the latest headline. Think of Live Titles as RSS-like feeds for your otherwise static bookmarks.
6) Suggested search terms from the search engine itself
Firefox 2 now includes suggested search terms from the search engine itself; for instance type fire and Google returns Firefox among other suggestions. Firefox 2 also has the option to add even more search engines that the previous version.
7) Anti phishing
I don’t know how good (or bad) this feature is as I don’t have any benchmarks to compare it to. I’ll just take the word of the many security reviewers out there on the improvement of the mechanism. That is, until someone gets hold of my information and starts using it illegally. Being security related, it will always be a work in progress so it’s hard to comment on.
Final thoughts
I do feel that the session and tab features can be improved upon as it is restrictive and those features seem a little difficult to find and navigate to e.g. maybe add its own separate section in the options menu. I have read in the Mozilla knowledge base that there is a separate “Session” option under the “Tools” menu but it is not present on my browser - did they take it off? Or maybe my version 2.0 didn’t install properly. The spell checker dictionary database also needs a little more work.
Setting aside the minor picky stuff above, my overall impression of Firefox 2 is that it is a well developed, robust browser with good and useful basic features without relying too much on extensions. No one can deny that it is certainly a step up from an already solid browser in Firefox 1.5.
It may be my imagination, but I have also noticed that page and image loads are a lot smoother and faster especially with pages/ blogs filled with a lot of external links.
With it’s aesthetics, it certainly looks mighty fine with the revamped shiny feel and (yes) they made the search bar area bigger without needing a downloaded extension. It would be interesting to test out IE7 when it does get released just to see the similarity/ differences in features and functionality.
For your reference here are my extensions that successfully upgraded (and those that didn’t) from my previous Firefox 1.5 version:
- Tab mix plus (not compatible)
- Copy plain text (not compatible)
- Bookmark duplicate detector (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- Firefox extension Backup Extension (FEBE) (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- FireFTP (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- Gmail Space (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- GooglePreview (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- IE Tab (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- Internote (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- PDF Download (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- SearchWith (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- Stumbleupon (compatible; successfully upgraded)
- Trashmail (compatible; successfully upgraded)
11 Responses to “My take on Firefox 2”
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THE INVISIBLE VEIL said: @ 7:10 pm
October 28th, 2006
Thank you for posting that…I need to update my Fire fox
kevin said: @ 12:37 pm
October 29th, 2006
I have to say I did like making the upgrade. It isn’t leaps and bounds above the older version but you can see a difference with some of the features.
kristarella said: @ 7:58 pm
October 29th, 2006
Good post. My thoughts on Firefox v2.0 were hidden amongst the rest of my thoughts on Ubuntu Edgy Eft.
I’m loving the in-line spell checking too. I miss some things from Tab Mix Plus as well. I was a bit sad to see that FF has “undo closed tab” but not a list of the last 10 or so. Then I found that it did have recently closed tabs in the history menu. Yay! I found it when searching to see if I have “sessions” in the menu, I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever looked in the history menu before but it looks useful. I also miss having the loading bar inside the tab.
Also, during this session I’ve got heaps of tabs open and they’re longer than my tab bar. There are buttons to scroll the tab bar, but you can also hover the mouse and scroll with the wheel to move the tab bar across. There’s also a button on the end that lists all your open tabs for a nice summary/easy access to them. Quite useful.
Do you not use Ctrl-T to open a new tab?
kristarella said: @ 8:01 pm
October 29th, 2006
Oh and cheers for the heads up on your extensions. The bookmarks duplicate detector would be useful! My bookmarks are out of control, so once I get them in order the detector might help keep them that way :)
The Foo said: @ 10:49 pm
October 29th, 2006
Kris: thanks for pointing out the previous tabs in the history… it’ll prove useful. no i didn’t know about ctrl-t to open a new tab - i do know now! i kind of like to do it with my mouse with a shortcut though but this will have to do. I do miss the loading bar in the tab as in tab plus mix! Have to find an extension that would do the equivalent the “copy plain text” one - I use that a lot. the scroll bar for tabs is useful but i never have more than 7-8 tabs at a time (which my 1024×768 resolution accommodates. i am sure that we’ll all find little bits and pieces of useful features the more we use firefox 2.0. Just a note, the bookmark duplicator detector has not worked at times with the old version - I hope they have improved upon it in the upgrade. Any useful extensions you wish to share that I don’t have?
Shelli said: @ 10:55 pm
October 29th, 2006
I love 2, 3 and 4. As for spell checkers not recognizing the amount of words that MS Word does, I agree, but then I just add them to my dictionary, and so far that has worked for me. Since I was a Blogspot user before I got my own domain and WordPress, and writing in MS Word didn’t ever transfer to Blogspot very well, I have always been one who writes all my posts in the post editor. I haven’t been able to find a spell checker that I can add on to my WordPress, so the new spell check feature of Firefox has worked awesomely for me. I wouldn’t have even known about the update (well I suppose it would have updated automatically) except that my hard drive crashed and I had to install FF on the new hard drive.
As for the bookmark thing, I rarely use book marks. However if they would start storing them on their site so that when my hard drive crashes again, then they would be there for me to recover, I would find use in that feature. LOL Thankfully, all my blog links are stored at Bloglines, so I didn’t lose any of them. Phew!
Have I said enough? We need to get the Mr. Fab to dump IE and get FF!
Shelli said: @ 10:57 pm
October 29th, 2006
I meant stored my bookmarks on their server so that they would be there when idiots like me don’t back up their stuff and lose everything in a crash.
Shelli said: @ 10:59 pm
October 29th, 2006
And by crash, I meant hard drive crash, not plane crash. :)
Okay, I am done now…I think.
The Foo said: @ 11:16 pm
October 29th, 2006
Shelli: I use the Foxmark Bookmark Synchronizer (the link is at the end of the post) to store the bookmarks on my Firefox on their server. What it does is that in an event that Firefox crashes on me and I need to reinstall, I only need to install the extension and my bookmarks would be synchronized automatically (after I login that is). The other useful part is that if I can install FF on another computer (like wifey’s), install the extension and synchronize all my bookmarks automatically.
The Foo said: @ 11:19 pm
October 29th, 2006
Shelli: ummm, i don’t know… Mr. Fab is one tough cookie - trying to convince him to dump IE for FF may be a little tough ;-)
kristarella said: @ 11:27 pm
October 29th, 2006
Yah, I’m pretty much using all different ones to you now. You have useful ones for sure… my computer already automatically asks to download PDFs and I used to have IE Tab, it was really useful but now I don’t have IE installed so I don’t think it would work. I might get gmail space, that could be cool.
I’m using del.icio.us plugin for easy tagging. It’s the one from the site, not FF extensions page. I think you go to the help section to download it. It’s quite intelligent, adding a button next to the home one to tag pages. There’s one available at the FF pages but it’s unnecessarily heavy.
Got Forecast Fox, handy when I’m getting dressed in the morning to know the weather forecast.
MeasureIt is a little measuring thing to get distances on pages. I mostly use it when I’m designing a page and need to know proportions of something in my browser.
Web Developer is sweet when designing. You can edit CSS (temporarily) in the browser to see the effects and then when you’ve got it right you can change it in your file. You can outline divs to find out their id details. That’s mainly what I do with it but there’s about 100 other things.
It’s not as useful for those with FFv2.0 but I was using Corrector in my Wordpress blog. It’s a really good spell checker for WP.