A brief review of :
Visual Refresh: Firefox 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience.
“We made some minor adjustments in how Firefox looks, but we didn’t want to change it too much or else people would freak out.”
Not a criticism, by any means. Opera went through a real schizoid period where every new release brought a completely different look, each one more crazy-busy than the one before. It too has finally settled down. This reflects some maturity in development for Firefox, but I suspect also a recognition that their popularity restricts what they can do by way of major UI changes.
Built-in phishing protection: Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page. Phishing Protection is turned on by default, and works by checking sites against either a local or online list of known phishing sites. This list is automatically downloaded and regularly updated when the Phishing Protection feature is enabled.
Opera is working on similar technology. This can only be good for web users.
Enhanced search capabilities: Search term suggestions will now appear as users type in the integrated search box when using the Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search engines. A new search engine manager makes it easier to add, remove and re-order search engines, and users will be alerted when Firefox encounters a website that offers new search engines that the user may wish to install.
Also sounds good. Opera 9 has a search engine manager which makes it easier to add/remove/etc. The suggestions sound like a good idea, at least in theory. Will have to see how it works.
Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button. Power users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip that let them scroll back and forth between their tabs. The History menu will keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.
Also good changes. The ability to re-open closed pages is a major disadvantage when not using Opera (which has had this feature for awhile). Also, I’m always surprised how other browsers seem to be happy to create new windows instead of new tabs, even when the user has a preference for tabs over windows.
The “close tab button on each tab” is a major “Well it’s about time!”
Resuming your browsing session: The Session Restore feature restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session. It will be activated automatically when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to resume their previous session after a system crash.
This is a long-standing Opera feature. Every browser ought to have it. Glad to see Firefox does now too. IIRC Opera does not save text typed in forms, so that’s a good improvement. I’ve never understood why Firefox wouldn’t allow for downloads to continue after a crash or quit, so it sounds like they have fixed that bug too.
Previewing and subscribing to Web feeds: Users can decide how to handle Web feeds […], either subscribing to them via a Web service or in a standalone RSS reader, or adding them as Live Bookmarks. My Yahoo!, Bloglines and Google Reader come pre-loaded as Web service options, but users can add any Web service that handles RSS feeds.
Very cool. Opera has a built-in RSS reader but it is, shall we say, fairly basic. Clear advantage to Firefox here.
Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms […] without having to use a separate application.
Another feature every browser should have (and which Opera doesn’t)
Live Titles: When a website offers a microsummary (a regularly updated summary of the most important information on a Web page), users can create a bookmark with a “Live Title”. Compact enough to fit in the space available to a bookmark label, they provide more useful information about pages than static page titles, and are regularly updated with the latest information. There are several websites that can be bookmarked with Live Titles, and even more add-ons to generate Live Titles for other popular websites.
Interesting idea. Will have to investigate.
Improved Add-ons manager: The new Add-ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes, combining them both in a single tool.
I freely admit that I’ve never really understood why people go ga-ga over themes for browsers or cell phones, etc. As a Mac user I do appreciate that it is sometimes possible to make an application “Look more like a Mac app” using a theme/skin, but if the app hasn’t been designed as Mac app, a Mac user will know.
JavaScript 1.7: JavaScript 1.7 is a language update introducing several new features such as generators, iterators, array comprehensions, let expressions, and destructuring assignments. It also includes all the features of JavaScript 1.6.
The only part of that I understood is “some improvement to JavaScript.” I doubt most of the Firefox userbase will care about this one.
Extended search plugin format: The Firefox search engine format now supports search engine plugins written in Sherlock and OpenSearch formats and allows search engines to provide search term suggestions.
Some sort of search engine improvement.
Updates to the extension system: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
In my thus-far limited experience with installing extensions I found adding extensions annoying. By default they are blocked, but even mozdev.org was blocked, which struck me as fairly odd, given the number of different extensions there. Also, better security would ask me if I want to allow Add-ons once or always. Right now there’s it is always or never.
Client-side session and persistent storage: New support for storing structured data on the client side, to enable better handling of online transactions and improved performance when dealing with large amounts of data, such as documents and mailboxes. This is based on the WHATWG specification for client-side session and persistent storage.
I honestly have no idea what that really means or in what situations that would be an improvement over alternatives. Firefox doesn’t have documents or mailboxes does it? I’m clueless on this one.
SVG text: Support for the svg:textpath specification enables SVG text to follow a curve or shape.
SVG is something like Flash, right?
New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
No idea what those are, as I use a Mac.
Of course there are a lot of fixes which aren’t mentioned here (for example ) but some of these strike me as strange inclusions for a release notes intended for the general public.
Still there’s no denying that Firefox 2 is bringing some new stuff to the table, much more so than Internet Explorer 7, which is basically more lipstick on a pig. And tabs. Finally.
When it comes to innovation in the browser space, clearly Opera and Firefox are competitors, and Internet Explorer is an “Also Ran…. Slowly”