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Firefox 2.0 out a day early
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 23rd October 2006
FF2.0 is out a day early.
Mozilla was set to release Firefox 2.0 tomorrow to the general public. However, for whatever reason, it ended up on servers today instead! If you're looking forward to getting your hands on the final version of the new browser, head on over to grab it.
The official FTP is here.
Of course, many of the servers are full. So thank our boy Rich for pointing out some nice, quick mozilla mirrors. If you can't get it off Mozilla's main FTP, head on over to one of the following:
English, US Version
English, UK Version
Give it a try, and let us know how you like it in our forums.
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Comments (61)Stats: 0.069 seconds
Can't see any spell-checking as I'm typing this though
If you're already running RC3, you don't need to do anything. RC3 = Final.
If the mirrors on the main site become slow, try these links instead...
For en-GB: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-GB
For en-US: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-US
They'll give you a nice fast mirror instead of everyone hammering the same one.
You can actually set the tab behaviour back to the 1.5.x way:
Enter 'about:config' into the URI bar,
Scroll down to 'browser.tab.closebuttons', and change the value to 3.
Hey presto, no annoying red crosses on each tab :D
(I just use my middle mouse button anyhow)
Not all improvements have to be visual, there's been SO much done behind the scenes.
JavaScript 1.7, hundreds of bug fixes, in-built spell checker, anti-phishing protection, and sooooo much more.
It's apparently the image rendering engine of all things. v3 should fix that
With regards to the memory 'leaks' I've had no problems with runaway memory usage, so far, just the inherent increase in memory usage you get from using many tabs.
EDIT: Grrr. ALT-S now seems to open up the History menu. Anyway to set it back to the standard function of submitting posts? :)
c.u.later
And then, just as I was about to write that, it froze again!
It's odd. Both crashes happened when I navigated to a page on the bit forums. Maybe it doesn't like something in Vbulletin....
Apart from that, I really like the idea of the inline spell checking, but the dictionary is woefully bad. Keep having to pop up to the google bar to get the correct spelling. I think it is learning without me telling it to though. Thumbs up on that one.
Think I will try IE7 in a bit.
Go download a better browser
You can force extension compatibility with Nightly Tester Tools in most cases (until the extension is properly updated).
Fasterfox works great after forcing, and there's an updated TabMix Plus on the official site.
edit: bah quack.
should this really be 2.0? the changes seem minor to me. seems like it should be 1.6 or something. but then again how much more can browsers be improved? maybe a 3d browser! I call patent!
to the above crapintosh fans ^^^ I got opera a month ago and meh. its okay i guess. its nothing special. Firefox larger user base means more people to work on improving it and adding themes, extensions, so unless opera surpasses ff in popularity I'll stick with ff. I will Never trust ms with my internet again, they have run out of chances with me so not interested in ie7 or even ie10
Now all i need is a theme to look like 1.5.
FOUND IT!!
Agreed, however as long as people use anything except IE, I'm happy ;)
I encourage people to at least upgrade to IE7. I like IE7, it's pretty good. What I dislike most is the horrible UI responsiveness when working with tabs. Sometimes it's snappy, and other times it gets stuck on a tooltip or something, which half shows up, then chugs for a few seconds before a tab opens or closes.
As for the "memory leak" in Firefox, yes, it is a page caching feature. I think it would be very wise to make it more blatantly optional, however. Even a simple "speed vs memory" question during install would be fine. Additionally, while I like things like built in spell checking and anti-phising, a better design approach would be to make them extensions which come with the installer. They would install by default, but still give users the option of removing or disabling them. This way you can easily cater to people who love such features and others who would curse it as bloat.
you need to install the English dictionary as an add-on apparently ive just tried it and it work perfectly :D its got Microsoft word-like red underscores :D
Also can I just install over 1.5 or do I have to remove 1.5 first?
Then just follow the links, UK English is on the second page.
Firefox 2.0 was NOT released a day early. It was put on the Mozilla FTP server so that the mirrors could start updating and be ready for the actual release. This happens with every version, patch and update Mozilla release. Nothing sinister or weird.
Linking directly to FTP servers hurts them, and considering people on Slashdot and Digg linked directly to ftp.mozilla.org they managed to kill it, thereby slowing the entire mirroring process down. If people are going to link to Firefox releases, they should use releases.mozilla.org as it doesn't harm a single mirror.
Unfortunately by linking directly to the main FTP server, everyone who's clicked on it has probably pushed the official release back. Oops.
Seems like you're on to something...today, as I'm writing, is the release day, and the Mozilla.com site is still offering 1.5.0.7. It's 10:20AM pacific...so the day's half over in most of the world.
Seems silly to still be offering the old version...if I was on dial up and didn't know 2.0 was coming, I'd be pretty mad about spending an hour downloading the old version only to realize the new one came out tomorrow. They should close down the site like apple does when it gets close to time for a new release...
Glider, I'll admit Belgium is efficient, that's twice I've got a Firefox release from that mirror when the USA Moz site had blocked tubes. (And our wee Belgian member Relix made some cheeky comment last time :p).
EDIT: Noticed your av Dark, beautiful poetry in a picture.
Having put the tab closure button back where it was in 1.5 I'm now quite happy with 2.0. The spell check is a highly useful feature for those who don't take quite enough care when typing (like myself...)
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* set default namespace to XUL */
.tabs-alltabs-button {
display: none !important;
}
/* Disable Container box for "List all Tabs" Button */
.tabs-alltabs-box {
display: none !important;
}
you should only have one instance of the @namespace line if you've already edited userchrome.css
It's for those people (like me) who open tab after tab after tab until in the old firefox you couldn't read a single tab title