Firefox 2.0 To Debut Tuesday

An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 2.0 for Tuesday, says the Seattle PI. They give a quick recap of some of the new features, and discuss the ongoing IE vs. Fox debate." From the article: "Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated and that Microsoft introduced for the first time last week with IE7, its biggest upgrade since 2001. Analysts said IE7 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, but the big question is whether it will stem Firefox's growth at Microsoft's expense. Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."

innovation?

geez, "tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated" that is beginning to sound like microsoft innovation. Long before firefox existed, I was using tabbed windows in opera. Give credit where it is due.

Re:innovation?

The only thing that makes me like Firefox more than Opera is the idea of Extensions. The fact that the browser can be enhanced by the users creates a big advantage in my mind. I wouldn't want all those features built into the browser, because it would be huge and bloated, and there's a lot of extensions that without them my life would be a lot harder. The web developer extension makes my life so much easier, but i'm sure that 99% of internet users in the world would have absolutely no use for.

Re:innovation?

So, to whom should the credit go to?
"Web browsers are notable for implementing this kind of interface (called tabbed browsing). BookLink Technologies pioneered this interface design in its InternetWorks browser in 1994"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing [wikipedia.org]

Re:innovation?

BeOS had tabbed-windows system-wide since it was released. What year was that? It also had to be around 1994 or so...

MDI

Not that it matters who came first, but Mozilla did actually have tabs earlier than Opera. What you were using in Opera back then was actually MDI [wikipedia.org], not tabs.

But of course other browsers had tabs far earlier than any of these two.

Re:innovation?

It was first introduced in NetCaptor [netcaptor.com] browser, more history here [mozillazine.org].

Re:innovation?

Opera might be better, and IE might be improved, but as long as Firefox has Adblock and the filtersetG updater, Firefox is the browser for me, my family, and anyone else that wants do do away with annoying (read all) advertising.

Re:innovation?

In case anyone wants to do the same on IE 7, the shortcuts are:

Switch between tabs
  CTRL+TAB or CTRL+SHIFT+TAB

Switch to a specific tab number
  CTRL+n (where n is a number between 1 and 8)

Switch to the last tab
  CTRL+9

Re:innovation?

Are there better browsers out there? Again, without question.

May I ask what are those other browsers you're talking about? I am aware of 4 major browsers other than Firefox. Let's have a look at them and how they compare with firefox.

IE7 - It finally got tabs and a search box but still has crappy html and css standards support. Actually it's a little worse than MyIE [myie2.com] for IE6. I'll pass.
Safari - Has a lot the basic features of a good browser and is very simple. Respects HTML and CSS standards. Has crappy PNG support (gamma correction) and for some reason scrolls slowly even on fast machines. It's a fine browser but I prefer Camino [caminobrowser.org].
Konqueror - Although I have limited experience with this one, it looks like a good browser/file manager, but I am un-aware of any features (appart from passing that ACID2 test) that make it better than Firefox.
Opera - The only browser that is at least feature-wise better than firefox. But for some people Open Source actually matters. Though even with that into the equation, I can't really say which one is the better browser.

So, while you can argue and I might accept that opera is better than firefox, what are the other browsers that I've been missing that are better than the "overrated" firefox? Oh, and preferably opensource.

Re:innovation?

Konqueror comes with AdBlock built-in, so that's an instant win in my book. It's fast, integrates with my desktop (unlike Firefox), and even has a few extensions of its own.

Re:innovation?

How do you use your router to block ads? Does it actually supress/remove ads, objects, iframes, etc. from the webpage, or does it just block the item from loading, giving you a red X or whatever on the webpage? Is it easily updateable? Can you right click on something that got through and have it added to the list? I have a WRT54G if that helps...

Re:innovation?

'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

Your signature is just so... um... I won't use that I word that Alanis poisoned. No, no, I won't.

Konqueror is rock solid and light on resources.

Besides having far better CSS support than Firefox 2.0, Konqueror also uses only a fraction of the resources. Opening the exact same sites in Firefox and Konqueror will often show a major difference between the two in terms of RAM usage.

For example, when I simultaneously open about 15 of the blogs and websites I read daily, top reports Firefox 2.0 rc3 as using 149 MB of virtual memory. Konqueror, on the other hand, uses a cool 28 MB for those exact same sites. Opera uses 31 MB. So as far as I can tell, Firefox is the lame duck when it comes to effective memory usage. This is with a build right from mozilla.org, without any additional extensions installed. I also disabled the cache for all three browsers, since I've heard that Firefox has a policy that leads to excessive memory usage.

A problem I have had with the Firefox 2.0 release candidates is crashes. This doesn't happen with Konqueror, or any other application I'm using, so I doubt it's faulty RAM. These crashes aren't easily reproducible, and I frankly don't have the time to bother debugging an application that I really don't use, and that crashes the few times I do try it out.

Re:innovation?

You beat me to it. Seriously though, firefox is highly overrated. Is it better than IE6? Without question. Are there better browsers out there? Again, without question.

But in terms of compatibility with the vast majority of websites, Firefox is far ahead of every other competitor.

I'm a power user. I routinely switch between Camino, Safari, Firefox, and IE under CrossOver as I'm browsing different sites and designing web pages. But for my friends who aren't power users and want something that "just works", I always recommend Firefox. It's safer than IE and has a few nice features that they'll appreciate, but is still simple and most importantly, is going to work on 99% of the sites they visit. Safari, Opera, Konqueror, and others all have compatibility problems.

Tuesday?

Tuesday? The day when security patches for IE are released?

Re:Tuesday?

Maybe they're saying Firefox is the ultimate security patch for IE? :^)

Re:Tuesday?

Why not? People used to say that Service Pack 6 for NT4 was RedHat.

Re:Tuesday?

Firefox _is_ the security patch for IE.

Re:Tuesday?

Indeed. Internet Explorer is a fine browser, I use it all the time on a new windows installation - to download Firefox.

Re:Tuesday?

Myself, I can't even bring myself to start IE, so I download my copy of firefox with the command line ftp client for windows.

Minimum tab size

One of the annoying things about the new firefox interface is you can't have as many tabs in the bar at once anymore. Sure, it has a scrolling interface, but I liked the sort of spatial representation of the old system. Is there a way to change the minimum size of the tab headers in the new firefox?

Re:Minimum tab size

s there a way to change the minimum size of the tab headers in the new firefox?

Set browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 0 (or whatever you want) in about:config.

Re:Minimum tab size

Yes there is. You can remove the close buttons from the tabs (make it look like it was in 1.5) and also tell the min width for the tabs:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButton s [mozillazine.org]
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabMinWidth [mozillazine.org]

Hey Folks

...Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."

Hey Folks,

They're both free apps under Windows! How does it really hurt MS if FF gets 100% marketshare? In fact, if FF were to take over it might actually benefit MS. How? IE has been their worst blackeye of the past couple of years. More problems with than than everything else. If MS could make all the bad IE press go away, don't you think that would be a positive? I realize this is like suggesting to Apple to let Dell build their hardware, but does that make it a bad idea? As long as FF adheres to Open Standards, everyone can compete with web-sites equally with it.

Re:Hey Folks

> How does it really hurt MS if FF gets 100% marketshare?

If all the people use Firefox, there won't be that many IE-only applications. This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems, which usually means that people stop using Microsoft software. Microsoft's strategy is to force people to stick with their system. Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?

Re:Hey Folks

This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems

Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.

Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?

There are plenty of possible reasons:

* It's easier
* It lets you do stuff that you consider useful/necessary/cool but that isn't in the spec
* Not Invented Here syndrome
* As you suggest, lock-in
* They're arrogant enough to think they know best and big enough to get away with it

Reason to remain on Windows

Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.

As long as there are web sites that are built for IE (important stuff like online banking) this is a reason for people to stay with IE and Windows. I hear it all the time. As IE looses more marketshare, companies are compelled to think about shutting out potential customers. That will lead to their web sites being compatible to web standards. That will make one less rason for people to switch away from windows. That again will lead to some chair throwing in Seattle.

Re:Hey Folks

IE is a loss leader, just like the Xbox. they make up by selling other stuff, like devopment kits for activeX applets and other stuff.

plus it's an anchor to hold people to their products.

how many people you know have computers only to check e-mail and browse the web ? if all these people switch to firefox, how soon they'll realize they can use FF running in linux, freebsd, mac, etc ?

what MS wants is joe sixpack to think that "internet == internet explorer" so they can keep shoveling windows on the unsuspecting masses

Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement

Its Sunday after all right now, so why not pray for FireFox? This is FireFox 2.0 Beta running on my Windows XP PC.

1. Starts without maximizing itself to the full PC screen area. Always leaves space available. In contrast SeaMonkey correctly occupies the full PC screen area when starting (but SeaMonkey makes me create a new profile except for once.). FF thinks its full screen according to its maximize/window button but is mistaken.

2. FF fails CSS rendering because it uses an antique CSS engine.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ [webstandards.org]

Those are my FF issues. What are yours?

Thanks,
Jim Burke
     

Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement

Reducing memory usage in Firefox:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-_ Firefox [mozillazine.org]

Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement

Good news... There are several [pcworld.com] reports [zimbra.com] that [mozillazine.org] Firefox 2 uses less memory than IE 7. Only a small percentage of users [cmp.com] ever had problems with memory usage to begin with.

Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement

> Wait for Firefox 3, when the rendering system will be given a major overhaul.

And that's just *nothing* compared with all the goodness we're putting into Firefox 4! Why do it now when you can wait a few years?

But where can I get my IceWeasel 2.0 ? -- NT

But where can I get my IceWeasel 2.0 ?

Here's hoping.

I hope it won't leak quite so much memory. That'd be nice.

Re:Here's hoping.

Legend has it that it won't matter, because if it's using too much memory, you can just restart it without losing what you're in the middle of.

"whether it will stem Firefox's growth"

Um, definitely not. When you can only run IE7 on Vista, XP or 2003, it won't be stemming the growth of Firefox at all. What a ridiculous question.

Market? What market?

Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month

This has gotta be one of the weirder (mis)uses of the term "market". After all, the competing "products" aren't for sale, and a "market" is usually a place where people sell things.

Of course, it can be difficult to establish a market when the "market leader" does the ultimate price-war thing and gives its product out for free. They did kill Netscape Corp, of course, but somehow they still didn't capture the "market".

There are some bizarre (bazarre?) economic theories at work here, I think.

One-time importing from SessionSaver?

We've been heavily using the SessionSaver plugin feature with Firefox 1.5. When (not if, when) Firefox 1.5 uses up all the system memory and Linux kills it, we restart a minty-fresh new instance of it and all our windows come back.

It turns out that SessionSaver doesn't work with Firefox 2.0, and it doesn't really need to because Firefox 2.0 has a session saver feature built in. I have several dozen pages open, and I'm wondering: is there any convenient way to bring those pages forward? Basically I just want to import my session.

If no one knows any way to do this, I'll probably whip up a quick Python script to convert the SessionSaver saved URLs into a format that Firefox 2.0 can understand.

P.S. I really hope that Firefox 2.0 will take longer to use up all the memory and fall over. Or even, dare I hope for it, not leak significant amounts of memory at all.

steveha

The Netscaping...

While people are busy commenting "the Netscaping" of Symantec and McAffee, people are missing the more obvious one:

The Netscaping of Firefox.. Quite a fit, eh?

IE7 has the power and ability to burry Firefox in the ground. And I don't want lame excuses like "but Firefox has X and IE7 doesn't".

You know this doesn't matter.

Bad release date

Too bad Firefox 2.0 release is going to be shadowed out by the release of Frozen Bubble 2.0 coming up on the same week :^)
Teaser here [dailymotion.com]. Rumors has it the game will be networked..

FireFox still rules

I'm a Windows user. I used to think that Firefox used too much RAM - I have about 30 tabs open in 2 windows, and it consumes over 140MB. In my book that's A LOT.

Few days ago I installed IE 7. I know, installing brand new MS software is a bad idea. But I'm reinstalling this OS soon anyway, so I wanted to give it a try. I opened the same tabs in the browser. Some of them didn't have my cookies, so slightly different pages loaded. But to my surprise, IE7 was taking up over 400MB of RAM. That's almost 3 times as much as Firefox. It got sluggish compared to Firefox. (I have a gig of RAM in a decently fast computer)

I'm sticking with Firefox. I'll test out 2.0 when it comes out, and baring bugs or bloat, I'll be using it as my main browser on all 3 computers I use.

m

I wonder how long I'll have to wait for Portable

I use Portable Firefox on my computers since it's much simpler to transfer my profile to new computers and to keep my settings in case of a Windows reinstall. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long for PF 2.0 to come out.

Sending in bugs

I used to be a bugzilla poster and nightly tester a long time ago.
I haven't been able to find where the FF2rc-nightly builds are hosted.
Some Google results are dead links and others are FF3 builds. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Got a good URL?
Or can I use a FF3 nighly to check against a FF2rc bug?

IE 7 Quick Tabs

The IE 7 "Quick Tabs" feature is very cool. It shows a tiled view of all tabs open with all pages rendered so you can quickly find your way and click a tab. I don't think any previous web browser has this feature.

Re:IE 7 Quick Tabs

The IE 7 "Quick Tabs" feature is very cool. It shows a tiled view of all tabs open with all pages rendered so you can quickly find your way and click a tab. I don't think any previous web browser has this feature.

Omniweb has had it for a little while, here's a screenshot [omnigroup.com].

Excellent

So 2.0 drops on Tuesday, and the biggest topic /. has to discuss about it is whether or not Mozilla actually pioneered tabbed browsing or not? Come on....

I've been using the 2.0 betas since they were publicly available, and have to say it's a big improvement. The individual tab closing button (it's nice...just give it a shot), the spell checking, improvements in the preferences interface....all around, a very nice job!

Who cares?

Let me know when IceWeasel 2.0 is out. Now *that* will be a great browser!

Opera is the first to go tabbed and other features

geez, "tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated" that is beginning to sound like microsoft innovation. Long before firefox existed, I was using tabbed windows in opera. Give credit where it is due.

I only second that, which the author did not take into account.

I'm a web developer

For me the big question as such is:

should we care to support Firefox 1.5 now?

We know we'll have to support IE6 for years to come, even IE5. But Firefox users typically upgrade their browser quickly.
So: do I check my sites in FF 1.5? Do I even keep it?

Before you tell me "but they all render perfectly and the same": it's not true. I keep Firefox 1.07 for this reason here, since it handles quite a bit of elements/CSS in a different manner (even clearing floats differs a little in some cases).

There's also lots of bugs fixed in 1.5, but not in 1.07. And there's also new oddball behaviours in 1.5 not present in 1.07...

FF has 10% market share. I'm just split if it's worth it going into so much detail.. maybe I'll just support 1.5 for a few months and move to 2.0.

Please share your opinion.

Re:I'm a web developer

The 1.x branch of Firefox used Gecko 1.7
Fx 1.5 uses Gecko 1.8
Fx 2 uses Gecko 1.8.1, so a much smaller change (as in no new feature in HTML/CSS, just bug fixes I think). The new features are in SVG (textPath support), JavaScript (1.7) and Client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org]
Fx 3 will be the next big jump to Gecko 1.9, with the reflow that will fix Acid 2 and incremental layout bugs, plus more CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 support.

and this is news !?

I'm using Firefox 2.0 for at least 2 months... I'm already on RC2 since 2 weeks.

IE7 is horrible

The inteface is crappy. I installed it and asked my wife to use it. She was frustrated in 5 minutes. No menu on by default. No favorites on by default. The bookmark manager is bad.

What the hell was MS thinking? IE7 doesn't touch Opera or FF.

The elephant in the room...

I am a big fan of Firefox in terms of philosophy and features, but have been driven to Opera (which I actually prefer for most things) due to the ridiculous amounts of memory that Firefox consumes. With multiple tabs open, I can routinely see Firefox over the course of a day or two of remaining open consume upwards of 900K, and it will continue to grow until it is shutdown and restarted. This is a serious issue for many Windows Firefox users, and the developers seem either unwilling or unable to focus on fixing it. This should have been the number one priority for version 2 in my opinion. It results in a shoddy product that would be unacceptable in a commercial application. Why is it that this elephant just sits in the room while FF developers pretend it's not there. Restarting an application should not be the solution to any problem, let alone one this serious. It's widespread and should have been addressed a long time ago!

I question the improvement

I cast serious doubt on Mozilla's claim of tab "innovation" but IE7 definitely perfected it by allowing me to REALLY turn it off! (Middle mouse button and all)

Summary Is wrong

Opera pioneered tabbed browsing, not Mozilla.

You just put egg on your face with that comment because clearly Mozilla copied that idea from Opera. Is it OK for Mozilla to copy but not MS?

Yet microsummaries can't be turned off

Hm... release day is Tuesday. How soon there will be a little piece of spyware attached to Bookmarks via Microsummaries?
Yet I can't seem to find the way to turn it off :(

Why wasn't this in imdb?

I find this rather surprising.
Who do they have playing Gant?
Are they going to make the MiG-31 look different in the special effects?
Will it be better than the original movie?
http://imdb.com/title/tt0083943/ [imdb.com]

Oh, nevermind.

Firefox 2.0 Themes

They already have Firefox 2.0 themes out.

crashing every 5 min

Maybe i am the only one having this problem but with firefox 2.0 rc3 it crashes every 5 min on me. that is unusable. I hope it gets fixed for the final revision.

IE7's Zoom / Magnifier..

I've now used Firefox exclusively for about a year and a half and as far as i'm concerned Microsofts neglect for IE for so long means that on principle alone, i'll never go back.

But I do some website testing and as a result felt it was in my interests to install IE7 now that it is released and see what its like.

Yes - shameless UI tweaks borrowed from Firefox and Opera (did we expect anything else?) but the one thing I do really like is the new magnifier feature for web pages. It just works really rather well and seems to handle most pages well.. and doesn't break formatting at all on any site I tried it on. It even scaled up Flash movies to 400% without making my machine die on its backside.

So certainly for people with sight issues, it'd be hard not to reccomend!

Better than IE6!

"Windows 98, its biggest upgrade since 1995. Analysts said Win98 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, but the big question is whether it will stem Ubuntu's growth at Microsoft's expense."

IE7 is better than IE6. So what? Both are too little, too late. No significant number of people is going to switch from Firefox back to MSIE.

Microsoft should put MSIE into maintenance mode, adopt Firefox, and actually be a market leader with superior technology, for once.

Microsoft's case of not-invented-here syndrome is what made the company almost miss the Internet boat, and if they're not careful, they're going to make the same mistake again.

I sometimes wonder what a technology company (as opposed to a marketing company, which is what Microsoft is) could do with the resources that Microsoft has.

Do I need to upgrade to ..

Firefox 2 to be able to run Dotcom 2?

*ducks*

Still doesn't mesh with system theme?

Does the final release candidate still not mesh with the system theme? I don't want Firefox to have a completely different theme from the rest of my UI -- I want it to fit nicely into my system theme. Has the system theme issue been fixed in the final version? Is there some sort of workaround for this?

Auto update to 2.0?

Can anyone tell me if Firefox will auto-update itself to 2.0 once it is released? Or os that only done for point releases?

I can't find any info on the Firefox site.

Maybe I'm missing something...

Can someone give me a run down of all the things being added to qualify this as a major number release? I see anti-phishing, anything else? Are there some major things going on under teh surface which weren't evident in the FF sites and such? Is this an overglorified minor revision?

Or is this a case of them figuring htat since IE had a major number release to seem like they were keeping up they needed a major number release?

Grammar

Shouldn't the title say....ON Tuesday?

No need to wait

While it won't be officially "released" until tomorrow, Firefox 2.0 is available now [mozilla.org].

IE7 can never touch this: Portability

One of Firefox's insanely amazing features is its portability capabilities. With an app like FirefoxPortable, I can maintain a single, portable browser environment on a USB Thumb Drive that lets me tailor my browser experience to MY liking, and have it wherever I go--something IE simply cannot do. And by using an extension like Google Browser Sync, I can maintain many of my user preferences and bookmarks across multiple browsers at work and at home, again giving me a predictable, consistent browsing experience.

Internet Explorer is so tied to a single Windows installation that it makes such portability impossible. In fact, I'd say that the whole influx of the customizable portal stems from IE's inherent lack of portability features. Firefox is not the end-all-be-all answer, but it offers many user-tailorable functions and features that IE will never have.

I'm simply waiting for someone to create a truely portable, secure online working environment that moves with you from browser to browser, has rich features and capabilities, isn't a bandwidh hog, and doesn't cost an arm and a let. THAT will be the next "killer app"...

don't ignore what really matters

No matter what features a browsers may have, it doesn't mean a damn thing unless it actually works for a given web-site.

There are a lot of main-stream sites that only work correctly with msie. I don't know why so many people make their sites like that, but they do. Comedycentral, a lot of yahoo, a lot banks, and so on just don't work with anything non-msie.

Already available?

No need to wait for the official announcement!
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefo x/releases/2.0/ [mozilla.org]

Download

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefo x/releases/2.0/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%202.0.e xe [mozilla.org]

Firefox 2.0 out a little earlier

Firefox 2.0 discovered [iqcontent.com] live and downloadable [mozilla.com] on Monday:

IE7 vs Current Firefox

I've noticed that IE7 has moments where it needs to think about rendering a page where Fire Fox would just do it. The new IE is nice but when those moments of hesitation occure it's like you can feel extra bloat in the browser or something holding it up. Firefox isn't without its quirks, now and then it locks up in memory and you have to kill the process because of some interaction with Sun's JVM. Not sure if it's the VM or Firefox, but thats one thing I noticed there.

Go ahead and get it now.

It's available on the ftp site so the mirrors get updated before the official release tomorrow:

http://mozilla.mirrors.tds.net/pub/mozilla.org/fir efox/releases/2.0/win32/en-US/ [tds.net]

-- Rick

Re:YAY!

Anyone know if there any significant changes that web developers will have to account for/be able to take advantage of?

Re:YAY!

The changes are nicely summarized in this page [mozilla.org].

I find "Client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org]" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future. There are also JavaScript 1.7 [mozilla.org] which makes JavaScript more Pythonic, SVG [mozilla.org] support, and several other features.

Re:YAY!

I find "Client-side session and persistent storage" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future.

Probably not too many, seeing as how web developers rarely cater to the ~10% of users that use Firefox. Personally I like the features and standards-compliance of Firefox, but the fact that 90% or so people still use IE haunts me.

Re:Lies

It depends on whether this was due to misstatements by mozilla people, or if it was just a stupid writer. Never underestimate how ignorant journalists can be.

Re:Lies

There were tab-based browsers before Mozilla or course (Opera for instance), but none where you could open pages in either a new tab or new window.

Re:Lies

When has Mozilla claimed that in innovated tabbed-windows interface? You are quoting Seattle Post-Intelligencer, not Mozilla.

Re:YAY!

With the built in spell checker, I expect about 12% of the web's users to look smarter by at least 50% on Tuesday, with the number expected to grow as Firefox spreads.

Re:YAY!

With the new spellchecker they will also be introducing a new attribute to the input tag: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Controlling_s pell_checking_in_HTML_forms [mozilla.org] Is this a non-standard attribute? Are we going back to each browser adding stuff and hoping the other one stays relatively compatible? I'm not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing. I was just curious.

Re:YAY!

Gah. With proprietary CSS extensions, they all have the moz prefix. Why couldn't they have taken advantage of XML\XHTML's namespacing features and put the attribute in its own namespace (i.e. moz:spellcheck). For what its worth, though, been using the FF2 betas/RCs for a while, and I love this feature.

Re:YAY!

Is this a non-standard attribute?

We wanted web pages to control the spellchecking defaults to some degree. For example, webmail applications will want to automatically turn it on for subject lines, even though it is normally off for <input> elements.

We discussed with the WHATWG web standards group to come up with the attribute. I'm not sure about the status of this in any of their specs, as I'm not sure there was any strong consensus. That's one of the problems coming out with a new feature not currently supported in any other browser or mentioned in any standards.

- Brett (Firefox spellcheck contributor)

Re:YAY!

With the built in spell checker, I expect about 12% of the web's users to look smarter by at least 50% on Tuesday, with the number expected to grow as Firefox spreads.

U ar right.

Re:Lies

Yes it's BS, but Mozilla didn't write the article so you can hardly blame them for it.

Re:Opera tabs.

Especially since Firefox made them popular.

Re:Lies

Most other tabbed browsers were single-window-only, as far as my experience goes. FF also allows multiple windows, remember.

Also, did Mozilla say they invented it themselves, or is the writer getting things wrong? Answer that before you place blame.

Re:Opera tabs.

Actually, I'm not sure it does. I preferred to have a single location for the "close tab" button, rather than individual ones for each tab. By all means add them to the tabs in addition to the static one on the right-hand side, but it was nice to have a button that you could repeatedly click on to close several tabs, without scooting along the line from one to the next.

FACT: OPERA DID NOT INVENT TABBED BROWSING!

Yes. Stop spreading the myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing [wikipedia.org]

Re:Can Firefox 2.0 turn off blinking GIFs?

Yeah it's called addblock

Do not go gentle into that good night!

Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

Re:hey, what does this remind us of? MMMMMMMEEEEEE

everyone remember when Windows ME was rushed out because their main competetor, Apple, just released a new OS and they didn't want to lose the market share

Nope. I don't remember Apple computers even being sold here when Windows ME came out.

Re:Mozilla is as guilty of copying ideas as Micros

Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that BookLink Technologies innovated in InternetWorks [wikipedia.org] and that Microsoft introduced for the first time last week with IE7

There, fixed it for you.

Re:Can Firefox 2.0 turn off blinking GIFs?

Enter about:config in the address bar and look for an option called "image.animation_mode"... change its value to "none."