Monday, October 30, 2006

Firefox 2.0

New versions of Firefox and IE are here.....

I have been using Firefox as my primary browser for quite sometime now and use IE only if I am forced to (vikatan & kumudam sites). So I decided to upgrade my Firefox to the latest version 2.0, I pass on IE 7.0 for now.

Some initial observations..
The only thing that stands out in Firefox 2.0 is the spell checker. For example, spell checker alerting me of the typos as I do this post. This brings in the MS Word kind of instant checking and possibly preventing the need to spell check in the end.

I also see some marginal improvements in the now famed tabbed browsing, but then that is mostly cosmetic and seem to have 'caught up' with IE7.0 in providing individual close buttons.

Other than these, Firefox site does boast of boatload of improvements in the security and personalization front, which are transparent to me at this stage.

Manual upgrade from Firefox 1.5x
I expected an auto upgrade to the latest and the greatest but I had to manually upgrade. I tried manually invoking the check for upgrades, but that did not work either..

I am not sure if it has to do with my corporate Firefox edition, but it would have been nice if the upgrade of auto-magic.

Have you upgraded to the newer version? What's your take on Firefox 2.0?

8 comments:

  1. Firefox 2.0 is quite different from 1.5. therefore forcefully upgrading it might have broken many applications and remember they don't have the same clout as microsoft who pushed out IE7.0 as a patch on to many unsuspecting folks.....

    Have u tried Opera ? It was the first tabbed browser and its foot print is much smaller than firefox. It's about 93% standards compliant and I love it.

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  2. I did a manual upgrade from 1.5 to 2.0. Spellcheck is one that I noticed too, like Ram says. I have been using Firefox for quite sometime now that I have completely lost touch with the IE interface! When it comes to viewing IE-only sites like kumudam or vikatan, I use the IE Tab extension. I can view these sites with just a click than going to the other browser.

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  3. What I see in 2.0 is, that a lot of features that were "extensions" in 1.5 have been incorporated in the browser 2.0. One such thing is the Tab manager, which had individual close button. Google Suggest was an add-on for search button, which was later incorporated in Google Toolbar pack (which I didnt like Google doing, because if I just wanted the suggest, I couldnt download it- what if I didnt want the toolbar?). In 2.0, suggest is a part og the search bar.

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  4. Hi Ram,

    Yes the manual upgrade is definitely a big pain.I would have imagined that the guys out at Mozilla could have put in a small incremental package (ala Microsoft) for the folks upgrading from 1.5. But no, you still have to squeeze the entire 6Mb download though your dial up line!

    The bigger headache is extensions compatibility.And honestly, the myraid of extensions available is probably the most important reason that Firefox has made so many inroads. But apparently browser updates and extension updates dont go hand in hand. Darn even biggies like AdBlock and Tab Mix Plus got disabled when I switched to V 2.0!

    I agree with Karthik on Opera though, its much more standards compliant than IE, loads up with blazing speed and cruises even with 50-60 simultaneous tabs open at the same time. Throw in a neat little email client, an integrated (Offline) RSS reader and you have a pretty complete package. If it does not render a page correctly its got more to do with the folks who usually design their web pages around IE.

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  5. Karthik S
    Hmm.. I don't understand this logic.. they could have easily 'un-installed 1.5' and installed 2.0.. Auto update (with an option) would have given then more hits..

    r.o-no-w
    Thanks for the IE Tab suggestion.. i will check it out..

    the jongleur
    I agree with you.. extensions compatibility is a big thing.. in my case I had problem with just 2 of them- both my office stuff.. but that got fixed in a day..

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  6. For IE Tab, we already have tools like MyIE2 (Maxthon). They come with mroe tools like FlashSave, ViewSource etc.

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  7. I am bit late here. Kumudam and Vikatan use proprietary fonts to display tamil text. Try Padma extension for Firefox. Padma automatically transforms indic text in proprietary fonts to standard unicode format. There is no need for downloading fonts. For more info visit my blog.

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