Firefox 2.0b1
26th July, 2006
I actually did try this. But I got bored within the first few days and upgraded again to the nightly 2.0b1 branch. What can I say? It looks brilliant. Another Microsoft killer for sure. Some say it might even pass the Acid 2.0 test, but that is yet to be seen in action. To the right is a screenshot that I took of the M/S killer when it was still installed as the official download, that can now be seen in the Mozilla Firefox wikipedia article (well, at the time of writing – here is a link to a revision with it on).
The application is great. It’s been reworked and un-quirked to make it enjoyable for all users, not just ones who take the time to learn the application. The RSS reading system has been upgraded and now it is just fantastic. Right now, I’m editing in a box with fucking spell checking. I kid you not. You can undo closed tabs, restore all tabs after a crash or hang and you can reorder and change your search plugins. All of these additions will probably be feature regressions for the slow catch up game of IE7. And I think that with IE7 introducing tabbed browsing to the masses will encourage users to switch over, if merely to see what the fuss is about. I can’t wait to see the future of Firefox, and I hope and wish it every success. With any luck, Microsoft will drop their browser and install Firefox as default. It won’t cost them anything, especially not in licensing, and it would free up developers for them. Think forward to open source possibilities Gatesy! You know it’s right.
I know this comment is a year late but… Yeah Firefox is sweet, but it seems as if someone tried to unofficially even the odds: look up the “IE7pro” addon. In general, I prefer Firefox. But in the cases where I’m using Windows, I default to IE7. It just seems more native to the Windows environment. But soon enough the next great Firefox version will be out and again stomp on Microsoft’s attempt to use their near-monopoly money to catch up. And the prophecy will come true from the Book of Mozilla.