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Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Arrives 351

Posted by Zonk from the enjoy-the-pretty dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 2 browser for developer review. It is being made available for testing purposes only. The release contains a number of new features, as well as some enhancements to look and feel. DesktopLinux.com has posted a list of the changes along with a few quick screen grabs. Apparently, the download can be found on Mozilla's ftp site."
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Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Arrives More

Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Arrives

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  • One question before I try this out... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:42PM (#16018948)
    Can this version happily co-exist with my existing Firefox 1.5 installation without screwing everything up? I'm eager to try out FF 2.0, but not if it causes problems with the version I have installed already.

  • Firefox 2? (Score:5, Funny)

    by KSobby ( 833882 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:43PM (#16018953)
    Isn't Clint Eastwood a bit old to be doing this stuff?

  • Portable version (Score:5, Informative)

    by xorowo ( 733585 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:44PM (#16018965) Homepage Journal
    For those of you that want to test this out without installing it, consider a portable version of Firefox 2 Beta 2 [cybernetnews.com].

  • Firefox Shakespear (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aqws ( 932918 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:45PM (#16018985) Journal
    FireFox, 2B or not 2B.

  • This alone makes it worth it (Score:5, Funny)

    by eyeye ( 653962 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:45PM (#16018991) Homepage Journal
    "toolbar buttons now glow when you hover over them."

    FINALLY!
  • ...but 1.5 turned me off to Mozilla. Konqueror loads a lot faster, and uses less memory.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )
      ...but 1.5 turned me off to Mozilla. Konqueror loads a lot faster, and uses less memory.

      For people without the hard drive space to dual boot, is Konqueror or any other KHTML based web browser ported to Microsoft Windows yet? The latest news on kde-cygwin [sourceforge.net] is 10 months old.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by savala ( 874118 )
        For people without the hard drive space to dual boot, is Konqueror or any other KHTML based web browser ported to Microsoft Windows yet?

        Yes, Swift [getswift.org] ("a web browser for Windows based on the Apple WebKit rendering engine") would fit that bill, although from what I've heard, Webkit has diverged quite a bit from KHTML. (Also: very alpha!)

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Mad Merlin ( 837387 )
        For people without the hard drive space to dual boot, is Konqueror or any other KHTML based web browser ported to Microsoft Windows yet?

        Dual boot? Why would you install Windows to run Konqueror?

    • That's because all the KDE libraries are already loaded once you log in. Try loggin into gnome and starting up Konquerer and see how much extra memory gets used just from running that one application.

  • Tabs will be broken (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anagama ( 611277 ) <obamaisaneocon@nothingchanged.org> on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:46PM (#16019000) Homepage
    Looks like Firefox drank the coolaid and opted for the tab closing button on each tab, thus presenting a moving target for closing tabs. I hope they make single button an option a least.

    • Re:Tabs will be broken (Score:5, Informative)

      by .killedkenny ( 589139 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:51PM (#16019064)
      -Red X (Close Button)-
      Some people were frustrated that Mozilla added a close button to every tab which resulted in an extension that removed those close buttons. Well, you no longer need to get an extension to remove those pesky X's, in fact there are multiple options that you can do now: display a close button on the active tab only, display close buttons on all tabs, don't display any close buttons, and display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). Here is how you can customize the placement:

            1. Start Firefox.
            2. In the Address Bar type "about:config" and press Enter.
            3. Right-Click and select New->Integer.
            4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter "browser.tabs.closeButtons" (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
            5. Now you need to select the type of close button you want: 0 - display a close button on the active tab only, 1 - display close buttons on all tabs, 2 - don't display any close buttons, and 3 - display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). After entering the value corresponding to your preference press OK again.
      • Ok I personally can handle this, but is there any news on if this option will be added to the preference menu before we reach firefox 2.0?
    • Ctrl-W. I haven't clicked on a close tab button in a while...

      • Re:Tabs will be broken (Score:5, Informative)

        by ZeroExistenZ ( 721849 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:01PM (#16019175)
        What about the middle button-click on the tab? (mostly using the clickable scrollbutton on your mouse)

        It took a bit of adjustment, but middleclicking a link to open it in a new tab is really easy; in the case of slashdot I just load the comments I want to read, or the article while I browse on until I decide to go more in depth or reply without losing where you were.

        When finished, I just middle-click the tab. It dramatically speeds up the browsing experience if you're used to using your mouse alot. (once I'm actually with both hands on my keyboard I tend to switch to keyboard shortcuts. But it's tedious to get to the right links using TAB)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zarel ( 900479 )
          But it's tedious to get to the right links using TAB


          That's what ' and / are for.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by anagama ( 611277 )
          In linux, middle-click performs a different funtion, namely, it pastes whatever text was last highlighted into the location bar and tries to go there. Maybe it's changeable but out of the box, middle-click does not close tabs in firefox in linux.
    • I seem to remember an extension for this. However, I can't find a link to it right now. I find it irritating as well, but not a deal breaker.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Blaskowicz ( 634489 )
      why not close tabs with the middle button (the same one that opens them) ? I never use that cross on the right, will disable the cross on each tab..
      And now that I think of it I'll try to find a way to disable that red cross on the right you like so much ;). how can I do that with FF 1.x ?
    • I HATE when I want to close a background tab and I have to move over and click on the tab to make it active, then move over and click a close box way off on the far right. Why shouldn't each tab have its own close box? Why is it so important for a close box to not be a moving target? Frankly, it shouldn't be so easy to just click through closing tabs like that. Use a keyboard shortcut like Ctrl/Cmd-W.

  • greetings from the year 3000 (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:46PM (#16019006) Homepage
    New Firefox 2 feature: Inline spell checking -- A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms.

    But will this detect antiquated Elglish, such as when people use "ask" instead of "ax"?

  • NSIS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:51PM (#16019058) Homepage Journal
    I hadn't heard that Firefox was switching to NSIS.

    Was the old installer Mozilla-specific code?

    Either way, the switch sounds like a good idea. The old installer had its issues, and focusing on the browser and improving an existing (and already quite reasonable) installer is a great idea.
    • It's a shame they still don't use MSI. Apps would be so much easier to deploy if apps used it, rather than having to write install scripts for every different type of installer. Just take a look [wpkg.org] at all the work currently necessary.

  • Does it still hog memory? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheWoozle ( 984500 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:52PM (#16019071)
    Anyway, Opera has most of these "new" features, and consumes fewer resources. I switched, and haven't looked back.
    • Anyway, Opera has most of these "new" features, and consumes fewer resources. I switched, and haven't looked back.

      The standard line.

      Wake me when Opera has extension support and I can compile it myself.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TheWoozle ( 984500 )
        If only Java applets worked correctly in Firefox on my Mac. That's why I downloaded Opera in the first place.

        Lack of extensions is no big deal to me (except for Flashblock!). Anyway, if I need the utility of some extension, I can still open Firefox. Last time I checked I could still use both at the same time.

        Oh, and lack of source code doesn't bother me in the least; I'm too busy working on my own projects (which make me money) to bother fixing the bugs in other people's code.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 )
        That's the beauty of Opera. It already ships with the features, so you don't need to hunt down and install "extensions" or compile them yourself.

        Plus, no memory leak bug or reimplemented widget controls (I have an operating system that provides those natively, thanks).

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ubernostrum ( 219442 )

          Plus, no memory leak bug or reimplemented widget controls (I have an operating system that provides those natively, thanks).

          That'd be nice if not for the fact that isn't true, and very very obviously isn't true on OS X. Run through this checklist:

          • Opera's dialogs and window chrome don't respect the system default font settings -- Opera uses a smaller setting that makes it feel extremely out of place.
          • Opera's form controls in web pages don't respect the system default settings -- the system says "Luc

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dcam ( 615646 )
      Opera is rubbish. I loathe Opera.

      I'm a web programmer and we run a site that supports opera 7+, IE5+, anything Gecko, Safari 1.2+. Opera is a bitch when it comes to writing javascript. Let me count the problems (BTW this is for the latest version):

      1. Opera hates innnerHTML. So generating options for a select list and then setting it using innerHTML means opera doesn't work.

      2. Opera doesn't like generated elements and doesn't treat them in the same way as elements that were part of the page. For example if y

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Opera is a bitch when it comes to writing javascript.

        Most of the time it's people who are bitches when it comes to writing JavaScript. There are now even some websites that take use of Gecko's internal XBL methods that are wrongfully exposed to regular web pages (Gmail's chat comes to mind, with its explicitOriginalTarget property).

        1. Opera hates innnerHTML. So generating options for a select list and then setting it using innerHTML means opera doesn't work.

        Do you know that the innerHTML property is Microso

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by umrain ( 698867 )
        1. InnerHTML is a proprietary IE-created feature. It is not javascript. Regardless, Opera has in fact supported it for several years now. If you are having a specific problem you might want to report it so it can be fixed: https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/ [opera.com]

        2. I just wrote a quick test generating a select with options and selecting an option with javascript and it works fine for me (innerhtml and dom methods both worked). Maybe I am misunderstanding what specifically you are having problems with?

        3. What does t

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by shutdown -p now ( 807394 )

        1. Opera hates innnerHTML. So generating options for a select list and then setting it using innerHTML means opera doesn't work.

        You should hate innerHTML too. It's not part of any W3C standard, and anything it does can be done just as well with DOM (which is a standard).

        Simply put, if you use proprietary extensions to DOM, don't be surprised that they are not supported in every browser. Code to the standard, and sleep well. ;)

        Opera doesn't like generated elements and doesn't treat them in the same wa

  • More like opera? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31, 2006 @04:56PM (#16019110)
    Reading over the new features mentioned and looking over the screenshots, it looks like Firefox is starting to look like Opera. The interesting thing is that Firefox started of with the concept of having a completely minimal browser where the extensions are used to customize it to the user. However, now it just seems like their copying the concepts that a bunch of popular extensions introduced (or copied from other browsers like Opera) and incorporating them into the core because they want to either improve their performance or manage the memory leaks or whatnot that 3rd party extensions cause.

    On some level, it's nice, but the one thing I prefer about extensions is that their feature/fix rate is fairly more frequent than Firefox's. It will be interesting to see where Firefox is 5 years from now.

  • For instance, toolbar buttons now glow when you hover over them.

    Great functionality. Can't live without it!

    Built-in phishing protection

    Wow, pure innovation. I've never seen anything like that

    Search term suggestions will now appear as users type in the integrated search box when using the Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com

    Hello!! MSN user here!

    Resuming your browsing session

    Pure genius. How did they invented that?

    Inline spell checking

    Dot'n need thtat! Ohh.. and everything for the gr

  • cookies (Score:2, Insightful)

    by the_wesman ( 106427 )
    am I the only one who thinks that cookie management blows in firefox? I mean, it's certainly worse in IE, but it's far from great and I haven't seen any enhancements to it in any recent versions (though I may just be blind or crazy, though not too likely) - sometimes, you go to a site for the first time and I've got FF set to prompt on cookies, so I say "hell no I don't want a cookie" then the site says "sorry, bro, this site doesn't work without cookies" so then I have to go digging around the block/allow

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skadus ( 821655 )
      You might look into CookieSafe [mozilla.org], or a similar extension. True, FF needs a better way to handle it by default, but that's what extensions are for, I guess.

      Whenever I start a new FF profile CookieSafe is one of the first extensions I install next to NoScript and Adblock Plus.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
      I actually find Firefox is the simplest browser to get cookies to do what I want.

      Basically, I tell it to accept all cookies, but only for this browser session. I then create a list of exceptions for sites that I want to be able to keep cookies until their normal expiration date.

      That way any site that requires cookies will work, and the moment I close Firefox, I'm back to only the cookies on sites I'm willing to trust.

      Opera has a similar feature, which will delete any new cookies on exit, but it's a little

  • One of the improvements (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Excors ( 807434 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:10PM (#16019251)

    Instead of ftp.mozilla.org, try the mirror page [mozilla.org] – currently it seems to list beta 1, but you should be able to modify the download URL to get the en-US beta 2 [mozilla.com].

    One small area that has had a reasonable amount of improvement in Firefox 2 is canvas [whatwg.org] support – I've been working on a canvas-based FPS engine [lazyilluminati.com] and get about 50% better performance in FF2 than in FF1.5, as well as lots of fixed bugs and memory leaks.

    Most major changes (like the new graphics infrastructure that'll help provide hardware accelerated rendering, full-page zooming, HTML inside SVG [mozillazine.org], better printing, etc) are being left for Firefox 3, but FF2 seems like a solid improvement over the previous version.

    The canvas is actually a nice example of progress on the web. After too many years with very little going on, the major modern browsers developers (Mozilla, Opera, Apple) are working in the WHATWG [whatwg.org] to add new features – it's a balance between proprietary extensions and W3C-style specifications, with browsers implementing features at the same time as the spec is being written and guiding its development. There's room for competition between browsers in terms of feature support, and we don't have to wait years for the standards to be completed first – but it's hopefully without the old problems of those features being proprietary and poorly designed. For example, Opera 9 supports much of Web Forms 2.0 [whatwg.org] and the Mozilla developers are just starting work on it too; and it's also designed to be backward-compatible, so the new forms are still usable in all browsers and can be emulated in some (e.g. IE) with JavaScript. Firefox 2 seems to be the first browser with client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org], but web sites written to benefit from that feature will be able to immediately work with future versions of e.g. Opera that support it too.

    With the popularity of trends like AJAX encouraging people to think about new ways to interact with users over the web, and browsers adding features to expand the possibilities open to web developers, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

  • Yawn (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Really...THESE kind of "features" are considered a major version upgrade?

    I repeat...

    YAWN!!!

    Why can't a god damned browser do what it is supposed to? JUST FUCKING BROWSE???
  • I put this in my userChrome.css file a while back to make the current tab stand out more. From the screenshot it looks like I won't need this trick any more.

    /*
    * Make un-selected tabs less visible.
    */
    #browser tab:not([selected="true"]) {
    color: #777 !important;
    }
    #browser tab:not([selected="true"]) .tab-icon,
    #browser tab:not([selected="true"]) .tabs-closebutton {
    opacity: 0.5;
    }

  • Please use the mirror infrastructure, not the direct link to the FTP site. You can get your builds easily at:

      http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-beta.h tml [mozilla.org]

    as soon as they are officially relased (which should be in a few minutes!)

  • Seems a bit more responsive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pcause ( 209643 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:15PM (#16019314)
    Been using today and it seems more responsive than Beta 1 and after a day a bit more reliable. Quick look seems to indicate that it uses less memory. Lots of add ins won't work with this and we should (hopefully) see a bunch of updates soon so that we can get our favorite add ins back!

    The new tabs look nicer. I hate the "go" button and haven't figured how to turn it off, but I'm sure someone will create a theme without it.

  • This is INCORRECT (Score:5, Informative)

    by asa ( 33102 ) <asa@mozilla.com> on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:26PM (#16019401) Homepage
    We have not yet released Firefox 2 Beta 2. This story is incorrect.

    - Asa
    • I wonder if there's something special about Firefox that makes people confuse "a file with that name exists on the primary FTP site" with "it's released." I've seen it happen with several Firefox releases, but I can't think of anything else where people have so consistently jumped the gun.

    • Re:This is INCORRECT (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31, 2006 @06:32PM (#16019944)
      Oh what do you know?

  • Phishing Protection (Score:4, Funny)

    by AeroIllini ( 726211 ) <aeroillini@NOSpam.gmail.com> on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:32PM (#16019450)
    Built-Phishing Protection:

    WARNING:

    The man you are about to converse with is not really a high ranking General in the Nigerian army, he does not really have a rich uncle who died tragically in a plane crash in Siberia, and he absolutely DOES NOT have $53.4 million dollars to smuggle out of Nigeria for his uncle's poor orphaned children. You will not get 30%. Trust us.

    ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

    +----+ +--------+
    | OK | | CANCEL |
    +----+ +--------+
  • Is it just me, or it feels MUCH faster than 1.5. Did they tweak things to improve speed?

  • Scrolling tabs? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AeroIllini ( 726211 ) <aeroillini@NOSpam.gmail.com> on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:39PM (#16019511)
    FTFA:
    Power users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip that let them scroll back and forth between their tabs.


    Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid and counter-productive idea? When was the last time you (the population of /., the proported "power users") actually clicked on the up and down arrows to scroll, anywhere outside a Flash application that forces you? It takes forever! I usually use the middle mouse button, click in the middle scroll area to jump, or click and drag the scroll handle.

    I like the idea of having more tabs than window space, but fer cryin' out loud, two scroll buttons are not the way to handle it. How about multiple rows of tabs? Or right click + drag to scroll back and forth? Or a drop down menu of tabs?

    I thought we all agreed that Flash applications that break scrolling are a Bad Thing (tm).
  • Excellent. I tried 1.5 in beta, I might try this version out too.

    But do they have official 64 bit support yet?

  • Linux builds (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @06:05PM (#16019715) Homepage
    Have they done anything to fix performance on linux builds?

    It's sad watching FF on a dual boot system run significantly slower under linux than under window on the same machine. Especially when other linux applications fly.

    And it's not even just DNS lookups. Simply switching tabs can take up to a second (?!) under linux whereas under windows it's 0.2 seconds (the perceived direct interaction threshold for most people).

  • I keep asking ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Thursday August 31, 2006 @06:20PM (#16019844)
    ... where's the multithreaded UI?! Gah.

    (Yes, 'Gah.' I went there.)

  • More features? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Korin43 ( 881732 ) on Thursday August 31, 2006 @09:12PM (#16020829) Homepage
    Can we have less features and just bug-fixes? I mean, the reason I used Firefox in the first place was because it was tiny. Don't go making it into Netscape again..

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