Mozilla Firefox 2 Alpha 1 Available

Mini-Geek writes "Code-named Bon Echo, the first Alpha of Firefox 2.0 is now officially available. You can download it at ftp.mozilla.org. From the article: 'Here are some new features in Bon Echo Alpha 1 that require feedback: Changes to tabbed browsing behavior, New data storage layer for bookmarks and history (using SQLlite), Extended search plugin format, Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions, Support for SVG text using svg:textPath'"

SVG support

[caluml]

I hope more browsers end up using SVG. There are some very nifty uses that can be made of it - an example of which is the porn database - http://pdatabase.dyndns.biz [dyndns.biz] (how's it going, John? :) )

Re:Getting a Firefox Alpha

[AKAImBatman]

(raises eyebrow) Getting an Alpha takes you back? Pff. I used to have a cron job that would download and compile Mozilla Nightlies every night on my Solaris box. It would automatically back up the current version just in case the new version didn't work in the morning. Every morning it was a new and wonderful experience to see how stable Mozilla would be today, if it would even run, and if there were any new features.

Back then we didn't have no "Alphas". We had semi-stable code snapshots called "Milestones" and we liked it that way! ;)

Re:But...

[hkgroove]

Yes, but you have to think in Russian for it to be efficient.

Re:Getting a Firefox Alpha

[bcattwoo]

Well, back in my day we would download "Hourlies" to our abacuses and sit around wondering "WTF is the Internet?!"

My favourite bug...

[GeekDork]

Bug 9458 [mozilla.org] (referrer block for links from slash), "Implement inline-block in layout" hast its 7th birthday coming up.

Re:Will Firefox 2.0 support the latest standards?

[jsoderba]

It will not. 2.0 is about non-rendering features.

Because of the huge changes going on in the Gecko rendering engine the Gecko team needs more time to work on it. 3.0 with the new Cairo-based Gecko 1.9 is scheduled for Q1 2007. See the Mozilla Wiki for more information [mozilla.org].