Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Review

This page has a 3 part review. The 1st part is Our Thoughts, the 2nd is a Review Summary and the 3rd is a Comprehensive Review of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 from an industry expert and professional. The review has been designed to be simple, mostly non technical and can be easily understood by most surfers.

Remember, sometimes its better to judge for yourself, rather than taking someone else's word for it but knowing the pros and cons can help in your own analysis and evaluation.

Checkout our Firefox Features and Firefox Add-Ons page for all new features and how you can make your web browser work for YOU or just be more useful.

Our Thoughts by InternetExplorer-Firefox.com

The new Firefox 2.0 has taken the browser market by storm. After over 300 million downloads, Firefox saw a whopping increase of 100 million downloads within 2 weeks of the launch of Firefox 2.0. So I asked myself, "what new features does it have?" and here's what I found.

The user-interface has been improved. The subtle differences aren't easily noticed unless you compare it with version 1.5 but it looks a lot better and fits with its new users ideas & expectations of a better browser.

There's also been some navigation and menu changes, which has now made Firefox 2.0 more slim-line as well as better intuitive usage. Like IE7, Firefox now has an integrated RSS reader and search bar. But unlike IE7, the search bar shows potential search phrases as you write your search words. This is brilliant if your not sure what to search for but roughly know what you want.

Although there has been a few security upgrades such as Built-in phishing protection, it can be further improved. We believe Firefox has given the essentials of browser security but the main protection is supposed to come from your anti-spyware and anti-virus software's installed on your PC.

Why not install Adblock Plus and RoboForm from our Add-Ons page, where you can also read a brief description, to make Firefox more safe and secure.

So, should you get Firefox? Well I think its always best to have an easily accessible alternative when you need one and Firefox 2.0 is becoming more than an alternative, as its begun to rival IE7 over the browser market. For me, having 2 browsers is important as well as essential. Since I make and update websites, I need to check how they look using different browsers. Those of you who are using Firefox to view my site will notice that there is a line under my title but that it doesn't appear on Internet Explorer when viewing this website.

Review Summary by CNET Editor

The good: Firefox has a tabbed interface; includes a pop-up blocker; built-in, multiple search tools; and built-in RSS reader. It is stable and free.

The bad: No ActiveX support, so not all sites work in Firefox.

The bottom line: Firefox's tabbed browsing, RSS support, security features, and overall cool factor make it more attractive than Internet Explorer.
 

Comprehensive Review by Alex Iskold

User-Interface Improvements

The first thing that stands out in the new Firefox is the more modern, snappier look and feel. Everything is more shinny, more playful and more clickable.

Tabbed browsing was a major browser innovation that Firefox popularized - and in version 2.0 there are further improvements to this. By default, the links now open in a new tab instead of a new window and each tab has its own close button. There is also a new handy way of switching between the tabs, via a pull-down list of all open tabs.



All these improvements are subtle, but good productivity boosters for the user.

Search Improvements

Search is probably the most fundamental thing we do online and Firefox excels at integrating search engines in a very smart way. With this new release, Firefox adds the search completion mechanism, which works just like Google complete. As soon as the user starts typing, potential search phrases show up.



This feature has been also added to the Firefox search engine format, allowing each search engine to support it.

RSS Reader Integration

Perhaps the most interesting new thing in Firefox 2.0 is the integration of RSS Readers. Since its early days, Firefox has made a commitment to usability and ease of use, which implies integrating all things web right into the browser. Wiring search engines into the browser is one example. In Firefox 2.0 we now see similar integration done with RSS readers.



When a user navigates to a page which contains an RSS feed, the RSS icon in the URL bar lights up. If the user clicks the icon, she is given a choice to subscribe to the feed using either LiveBookmarks or one of the popular online readers like Google Reader. This is a nice and clean integration, but one can't help but wish to have an RSS Reader built right into the browser. Flock, for example, features one of the best RSS Readers and it makes a big difference for end user experience.

Other Notable Improvements:

There are a number of software improvements in Firefox 2.0. Some of them are:

• Fixed memory leaks and improved performance

• Built-in phishing protection will warn the user of suspicious sites

• Persistent sessions will restore the session after system restart Smart spell checking for web forms

• Live Titles and microsummaries help sites convey the latest interesting content

• Improved add-on manager helps the users manage extensions and themes

• Enhanced security and localization support for extensions

Support for JavaScript 1.7

Will this be enough?

It might not seem like Firefox 2.0 has a lot of new features, but we think it is a solid release. The team's focus on performance, stability, usability and security clearly results in a better, faster product - and users will be pleased with that.

However it is also clear that Firefox needs to do more innovation and web integration in order to gain bigger market share. In future we hope to see better bookmarks, better history, a built-in RSS Reader, more productivity features and more smart web integrations. Perhaps with advanced functionality like this, Firefox would make significant ground on IE.