firefox 2 beta 1 lands @ mozilla!

This beta release is intended for developers and testers. If you don't enjoy playing with pre-release software, then this isn't for you.

That being said, this first beta of Firefox 2 has some great new features that I think you all are really going to enjoy. As you're using the beta, here are some of the new and improved features we'd like you to try out and give us feedback on.

Inline spell checking: The new built-in spell checking for web text fields makes blogging, forum posting, and webmail usage a whole lot better.

Search suggestions: When you're searching any of Yahoo!, Google, and Answers.com, you'll now get a drop down list of suggested terms as you type.

Search plugin management: You can now quickly view, add, and edit installed search plugins in Firefox's integrated search bar.

Session restore: If there is a crash, Firefox will now restore your session where it left off. It restores your tabs, text typed in forms, and any active downloads. With this new feature, you can also reopen tabs or windows that you accidentally closed.

Phishing protection: Phishing protection warns you when you are about to land on a suspected phishing site. It checks sites against a local list that is kept up to date automatically. The list is far from complete and may be somewhat inaccurate still. At this stage, it's only intended for testing.

Improved feed support: Firefox does a much better job at detecting when web feeds are available, gives you nice preview of the feed and allows you to easily decide how you want to handle the feed: either by subscribing using My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Google Reader, or the web service of your choice, using a standalone feed reader, or creating a Live Bookmark in Firefox. The list of included web services is not yet final.

Improved add-ons management: The extension and themes management interfaces have been combined for improved usability and convenience.

Bookmarks microsummaries: Traditional bookmarks used the page title as their primary label. With bookmark microsummaries, you get a dynamic and more useful bookmark title. You can read more about microsummaries here.

Tabbed browsing improvements: Links that would open a new browser window now open in new tabs by default. The single close tab button has been replaced with close buttons on each tab. Also, a preliminary tab overflow solution is available for testing. This is likely not the final solution.

Under the hood improvements: A new NSIS-based installer. JavaScript 1.7. Enhanced security and localization support for extensions. OpenSearch support. SVG's svg:textPath support. Client-side session and persistent storage.

You can read about it at devnews and get the Firefox 2 Beta 1 download here.

Posted by asa on July 12, 2006 7:45 AM

reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.

Firefox > All

Whooo! Firefox FTW!

Posted by: Chris | July 12, 2006 1:24 PM

Are there an easy way to let the release version of firefox (1.5.0.4) autoupdate to the beta-version? (I know "beta" means "not for production use", but hey, it was worse when I was using nightlies :) )

Posted by: n | July 12, 2006 3:42 PM

Fishing protection

Posted by: Bob | July 12, 2006 3:43 PM

Are there an easy way to let the release version of firefox (1.5.0.4) autoupdate to the beta-version?

about:config -> set app.update.channel to "beta".

Posted by: Dao | July 12, 2006 4:12 PM

about:config -> set app.update.channel to "beta".

Additional note: You may also want to set extensions.checkCompatibility to false, otherwise many extensions will be disabled.

Posted by: Dao | July 12, 2006 4:15 PM

Where have the microsummaries gone? I see everywhere that microsummaries is in it, but they aren't as visible as in alpha 3. I have tried Asa's blog and see no Summary list, and even added some of my own microsummaries to no avail.

Posted by: Daniel | July 12, 2006 5:03 PM

Oh, nevermind. I had a look through bugzilla and found that they changed the behavior of the Name field. Makes sense and works for me. Great build.

Posted by: Daniel | July 12, 2006 5:05 PM

which build date of branch is beta 1 based upon?

Posted by: mdew | July 12, 2006 11:50 PM

Recently Closed Tabs is hidden in History menu. Is there any way by which I can rescue it out of there to say my main toolbar?

Posted by: Praveen | July 13, 2006 1:39 AM

I've been using the 3rd alpha version (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1a3) Gecko/20060526 BonEcho/2.0a3) since it went out, and it was very stable.

Why doesn't it update to the beta?

Posted by: noamt | July 13, 2006 2:06 AM

i'm glad to see FireFox entering Opera's path ;o)

Posted by: Onan | July 13, 2006 4:48 AM

Dao> Thanks you. But oddly enough, it seems that my app.update.channel is already set to beta.

A bit of googleing (now that I knew what I was looking for) gave this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_Update Which tells that "Note that to change channel you cannot simply change the preference in about:config." and gives a link to an extension that can be used. When using the extension to switch to (the release channel and back to) the beta channel, nothing happens, but switching to the nightly channel shows that an update is waiting. So it seems the beta-channel is not quite ready. (Now it however seems, that I can't change back to the release channel without downloading a nightly, since the extension will only let you change channel after no updates have been found).

Posted by: n | July 13, 2006 5:32 AM

Following extensions don't work:

Plain Text Links
Tab Mix Plus

Also I'm getting a conflict between Livehttpheaders and SessionManager (which I've installed to replace the session mananger in Tab Mix Plus).

I've also had one crash so far.

Ooh, red underlining of words :)

Posted by: Ian | July 13, 2006 6:37 AM

Two more issues:

DOM inspector - "blink selected element" doesn't seem to work any more.

DOM inspector - Deleting nodes often causes the browser to crash.

molgar: Thanks! I'll try that out :)

Posted by: Ian | July 13, 2006 7:01 AM

That dev build of Tab Mix Plus seems to work, thanks!

Posted by: Ian | July 13, 2006 7:36 AM

"That's one small step for man", one giant step for the Internet.

Posted by: KenSaunders | July 13, 2006 7:42 AM

@Praveen: Right-clicking a tab or the empty area of the tab bar includes an "Undo close tab" menu item. It's not quite the full functionality of the recently-closed-tabs menu, but for the "D'oh!" moments, it's sufficient (and quick enough to get to).

Posted by: Kelson | July 13, 2006 8:36 AM

Dose anyone know if there are updates for the FlashBlock and Greasemonkey extensions?

Posted by: Erik | July 13, 2006 11:11 AM

Any idea on how I can expand the Search box?

Posted by: AD | July 13, 2006 5:11 PM

Works well but breaks the following extensions:

1. Super DragandGo 2.4d1
2. QuickNote 0.6.0.2

The extensions remain broken even after the installation of Nightly Test. Does anyone have a workaround?

Posted by: Chee | July 13, 2006 6:30 PM

For me, the following extensions are currently disabled:
- All-in-One Gestures
- Foxylicious
- Google PageRank Status
- Web Developer

Posted by: minghong [TypeKey Profile Page] | July 13, 2006 11:34 PM

install nightly tester tools minghong,

http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/content/firefox/nightly/nightly-1.1.xpi

it should help with most of the incompatibilities between 1.5 and 2.0.

Posted by: steve | July 13, 2006 11:42 PM

Being from Australia I downloaded the British version ('cause we spell like them guv'ner and not like the yankee's, struth mate eat a koala and all that.). My search defaults to google.co.uk, does anyone know how to change it to google.com.au?

Posted by: rustyshelf | July 14, 2006 5:33 AM

Steve: Thanks for the link to the fixed Super DragandGo extension. I had tried another supposedly 'fixed' version (2.4d1.1) but that didn't work. This one does. Now, if only someone can do the same for QuickNote, my joy would be complete. Any takers?

Posted by: Chee | July 14, 2006 6:38 AM

rusty: try removing the google uk search, then adding the aussie google engine via 'manage search engines..'
chee: what doesnt work in quicknote?, i've got it installed here on 2.0b1

Posted by: steve | July 14, 2006 9:03 PM

Thanks steve, that really helps. :-)

Posted by: minghong [TypeKey Profile Page] | July 16, 2006 10:21 PM

Steve: That's the first thing I tried (long before posting on here), but I can't for the life of me figure out how to add Google as a search engine (it's not on the main page that comes up). I actually ended up removing everything except Answers.com and now I have no idea how to get them back. I'm a web developer who has used for computers for at least 10 years now, so either I'm overlooking something really obvious or the UI still needs work.

I've gone back to 1.5 for now, mainly because Web Developer (extension) wasn't compatible with 2.0 but also because of the search thing.

Posted by: rusty | July 17, 2006 1:40 AM

rusty: It should work, all you're doing is adding a new search engine. Go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/google.html and add the engine you want.

I tried the Web Developer extension too, it works fine under 2.0b1. Make sure you install http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/content/firefox/nightly/nightly-1.1.xpi first, this will allow some 1.5 extensions to work better under 2.0.

Posted by: steve | July 17, 2006 5:09 PM