A brief look at a couple of new features in Firefox 2.0

Firefox ver 2.0 was released a few days back and naturally it is loaded with a host of new features some of them prominent and many more rather subtle. I found this new version to be a huge improvement from the older 1.5.x version which is bundled with most Linux distributions. These are some of the new features in ver 2.0 of Firefox which I found really interesting.

New features in Firefox 2.0

A better theme - The new Firefox 2.0 theme and user interface has been subtly revamped to provide a better user experience. For example apart from the Bookmarks menu, you have got a History menu (previously named 'Go' menu) which lists not only the recently visited websites but also the recently closed tabs. You can also open your browsing history in a side bar using the 'Ctrl+H' hot key.

Built-in Phishing protection - Think of the last time you were confronted with an email supposedly from Paypal which provided a link which directed you to a seemingly valid webpage of paypal which was actually a spoof of the original page. This sort of social manipulations are popularly known as phishing attacks. Phishing is a form of identity theft that occurs when a malicious Web site impersonates a legitimate one in order to acquire sensitive information such as passwords, account details, or credit card numbers. Now Firefox has inbuilt phishing protection which provides a warning about the webpage you are visiting if it happens to be a known offender.

Fig: Firefox warns when you encounter a Phishing site

Enhanced search capabilities - One of the most convenient features of Firefox in my opinion is the search box at the upper right corner of the web browser. You type a search query in this box and press enter and your search results are displayed in the browser window. By default, it is set to Google search. But it also provides a drop down menu from which you can choose other search engines including Wikipedia and Websters Dictionary. In fact this search list is modifiable and Mozilla has a collection of diverse search sites which can be added to the search engine list. Of course, this is a feature which was available in previous versions of Firefox. What is new is that when you type in the search query, search term suggestions will automatically appear. There is also a revamped search engine manager which allows you to add, delete and re-order the search engines in the list.

Fig: Provides search term suggestions as you type in.

Improved tab browsing - This is one of the most visible, new feature in Firefox 2.0. Unlike earlier when all the tabs had a single close button positioned on the right hand corner, now you have a close button for each tab a.k.a Opera style which makes it easier to manage. All new windows are automatically opened in new tabs. Earlier when you had innumerable tabs opened at the same time, the tabs used to spill over beyond the viewing area and there was no easy way to manage the tabs. Not so this time. When the number of tabs increase, Firefox automatically makes available a navigator in the tab pane area on both sides which can be used to get to the non-visible tabs. But the one improvement which I like so much is the undo close tab functionality. This works as follows. Suppose you have closed a tab accidentally and you forgot the address of the webpage. In the new version of Firefox, it is a simple case of just right clicking on any tab and selecting the option "Undo Close Tab" and the tab which you accidentally closed will be opened with the prior website loaded.

Fig: Close button on each tab.

Resuming your browsing session - This is another feature which I find really useful. If at all your computer just rebooted while you were seriously checking out a couple of websites in Firefox maybe because of a power fluctuation or a surge (has happened to me a number of times), the next time you open Firefox, it will offer to resume the previous browsing session and you can continue from where you had left.

Previewing and subscribing to Web feeds - Prior to ver 2.0, even though there was a facility to subscribe to web feeds (RSS,Atom...), if you needed any further functionality, you had to depend on extensions. Now though, this feature has been significantly revamped. You can preview the web feed before you subscribe to it. What is more, you can opt to subscribe using Live feeds (default in Firefox) or any of the other web services that handles RSS feeds such as bloglines, Google reader, My Yahoo or one of your own.

Fig: Enhanced feeds subscription

Inline spell checking - Firefox 2.0 comes with inline spell checking functionality. What this means is that when you enter text in a form element such as a text area, Firefox underlines the mis-spelled words in real time. And the user need just place the mouse cursor on the highlighted word and right click to receive a number of suggestions to the mis-spelled word.

Fig: On the go spell checking of form elements

Improved Add-on manager - Firefox 2.0 has merged the add extensions dialog and add themes dialog into one integrated tool.

Support for JavaScript 1.7 - This is a new addition to Firefox. There is a good article on what is new in JavaScript 1.7 at Mozilla Developer Center.

Installing Firefox 2.0 in any Linux distribution

I use a fail safe recipe in installing Firefox 2.0 in GNU/Linux and it works without fail which ever be the distribution. There is nothing to it really, just download the Linux version of Firefox 2.0 from the official website and unpack it in the directory /opt (You will need root access though). Once it is unpacked, you can create a link on your Desktop to the Firefox binary in the /opt/firefox location. The beauty of this method is that the new version of firefox will co-exist with the firefox version which was installed by default in your Linux distribution. Not only that it will also use all the bookmarks and extensions which you have installed in the older version of firefox as long as they are compatible with the new version.

As I stated earlier, the latest version of Firefox has a lot to offer in terms of added features which imparts a new meaning to the word convenience.