Review: Mozilla Firefox 2

There are few software programs that have had such an impact as the Firefox internet browser. It brought advanced features such as tabbed browsing to the mainstream, so the upcoming new version has a lot to live up to.

It is a mark of how well designed Mozilla Firefox was that there appears to be very little different in this new release. The icons have been given the once over and look more modern but it essentially appears much as it has done.

Howver, appearances can be deceiving and it would be wrong to think that this is just a new theme pack. The majority of changes may have happened under the bonnet but they are no less significant, such as the support for JavaScript 1.7 and a new Windows installer.

Tabbed browsing has been improved significantly, with links opening in a new tab rather than a new window and a close button for each tab.

The Opera browser still has the edge with the tab preview however unlike Opera, Firefox tabs have a minimum size, large enough to read the title. A session of tabs can be saved and loaded the next time – it would be better if this was the default option.

RSS feeds still appear as live bookmarks rather than the more common email-like interface. Firefox 2 comes with integration for several online RSS readers such as Bloglines. It is a shame that this has not been taken further for bookmarks and photos, as Flickr has done.

Phishing protection is either provided by a downloaded list or by checking each page. The latter service is provided by Google; in order to use this service the URL is passed to Google and logged.

Although Google states that it will not collect any personal data, it is still possible that personal information may be inadvertently collected via cookies. This is not ideal but at some point you have to trust somebody online or make your own decisions.

One interesting variation on Live Bookmarks innovation is microsummaries for websites. These are brief descriptions of a website that are used instead of the site name for the bookmark.

An example is the BBC news site where the latest headline is shown rather than just BBC News.
This is a clever and convenient idea but it will need support from websites and maybe other browsers. Still, if the adoption of other ideas featured in Firefox is anything to go by, this may not be a problem.

Also consider:
Opera
Flock