Article: Firefox 2.0 NOW

You can download Firefox 2.0 now. Go to www.getfirefox.com and click on download.

For newbies out there, Firefox is an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. That Firefox survived the behemoth that squashes everything in its path to move on to version 2.0 is a miracle in itself.

Firefox survived Microsoft. This fact alone should recommend you to use it. It has to be very good for it to survive Microsoft. It was up against Internet Explorer. It was in direct competition with an established key product. It survived. I know I am gushing. Sorry, I am a nerd. These sorts of things get me excited.

What does Firefox 2.0 offer?

Protection against Phishing. Phishing is internet Fishing. In internet Phishing, you are the pish. Firefox 2.0 tries to protect you from being hooked. You do not want to be hooked. It is very painful.

Improved Tabbed Browsing. Tabbed browsing is where a tab appears inside the window you are seeing instead of opening a new window. Do you not hate to have to switch between windows all the time? It is so much easier to work always within the same window. The improvement in 2.0 is that each tab will come with a close tab button.

Resume browsing when computer crash. If the cat trips the power and fries itself and your computer shuts down suddenly, you can simply resume where you left off. This is important as you will be doing more and more work directly on browsers.

Inline spell checking. You will have to type directly into the web pages even more than what you do now and with a spell checker, it will remove the embarrassment of making spelling mistakes.

SGV Text. Web pages using svg:textpath specification will now have text follow a curve or shape. This is important for accelerated webpage appearance by replacing images (large files, slow) with SGV text.

Live Titles. When you bookmark a web page, it can now include more information about the web page if the developer had enabled it.

The above are some of the features that a non-technical user can appreciate. Other features include Javascript 1.7 from Javascript 1.6. Client-side session and persistent storage.

Now for the downside. There are some known issues. These include firewall issues, having to download dictionaries manually if you are not using English and problem with printing text pages if there are spelling mistakes in the web page.

Your web mail might also come back on without you having to log in again. This might happen if you use web mail that uses cookie authentication. If you are afraid of any remote possibility of your wife looking at your emails, you might want to disable session restore.

Other issues include port 563 being blocked. Installing Firefox in a network environment.

The average user is not likely to encounter the known issues. There are workarounds anyway. If you know a little about tweaking computers, you can simply follow the instructions for the workarounds.

Or you can simply uninstall the program.