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Firefox 2 Launch - Interview With Chris Beard

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the moving-on-up dept.

ReadWriteWeb writes "This afternoon Firefox 2 will be 'officially' launched. In anticipation of the unveiling, ReadWriteWeb has a brief interview with Chris Beard — Mozilla Vice President of Products. Subjects discussed include the growing enterprise usage of Firefox, the importance of user experience and security, Mozilla's theory behind Web feeds and why they haven't included an integrated RSS Reader, the growing add-on ecosystem, offline browsing, and finally a little about the future of the browser." From the article: "It felt to us like a 2.0 product, particularly if we looked at it from what 1.0 was, to 2.0. It was like half steps, from 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0. It's also a very stable and rock solid release - it's really ready for the masses. So it really does feel like a 2, as opposed to a 1.x product. Firefox 2 has, we estimate, between 3-4 times the number of fixes than FF 1.5 did. And that doesn't just include fixes and bugs, but all of the feature work as well as memory, stability and security issues. But there's certainly a lot in it which makes it really solid." Also on the site is a concise review of the product, and an overview of Marketing Firefox 2.0.

10 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Good so far.... by dpaluszek · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been using it since yesterday since Mozilla had it posted in their pub directory.
    So far, so good. I was upset my Daily Dilbert and FastFirefox Extensions weren't compatible though. :( But I like the new look and feel to it, plus it uses quite less memory.

    Good job Mozilla!

    1. Re:Good so far.... by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Informative

      This: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/421/

      tends to fix extension incompatibility issues. Most extensions really are compatible; they just have 1.5 as the highest version supported. That extension lets you modify the maxversion with a single click in the extension manager, "fixing" the incompatibility.

      Of course, YMMV, but Bookmarks Synchronizer, TinyURL creator and Flashblock (the extensions that broke for me) work fine when I "Make compatible".

      -Z

  2. Re:New tabs are great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    to get rid of the close buttons on every tab and make it like 1.5 goto about:config and set
    browser.tabs.closeButtons to 3

    and to hide the Go button set
    browser.urlbar.hideGoButton to true

  3. Re:New tabs are great by tmasssey · · Score: 3, Informative

    From the review of FF2: Tab Tweaks.

    I've also found that this extension works fine with FF2: Tab Minus.

    Small,and does the job perfectly. This was my single-biggest hassle with FF2. I do not understand how quasi-randomly moving the location of an item I use ALL the time is supposed to make things more efficient. Especially when you've opened up a bunch of images or documents in separate tabs and want to quickly scan through them looking for someting. Your eyes have to bounce around the screen, finding the stupid close button.

    The old mechanism seemed to work better for that: put your mouse on the close button, and now you can focus on the *data*, not finding the button over and over... With the extension, you don't have to choose: they're both avaiable. Works for me.

    --
    Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
  4. Re:Will it be on autoupdate ? by linuxci · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, autoupdate will allow you to update to 2.0. You have the option to refuse the update. If you refuse the update then the update will still offer you point releases of the 1.5.x series while it continues to be supported.

  5. Re:New tabs are great by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Informative
    to get rid of the close buttons on every tab and make it like 1.5 goto about:config and set browser.tabs.closeButtons to 3


    Alternatively, setting it to 0 will put a close button only on the current tab, if you prefer.

    Personally, I like the default, though.

    --
    My blog
  6. Re:New tabs are great by ben+there... · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just to add to that:

    browser.tabs.closeButtons 0 = close button on active tab
    browser.tabs.closeButtons 1 = default, close button on all tabs
    browser.tabs.closeButtons 2 = no close buttons
    browser.tabs.closeButtons 3 = Fx 1.x style, one close button on right

    It updates instantly so you can try them all out and find the one you like. I like 2 because I use an extra mouse button to close tabs instead of the close buttons.

  7. Re:Undo close tabs? by jonasj · · Score: 4, Informative

    CTRL+Shift+T.

    You can also right click the task bar and say Undo Close Tab.

    And the History menu contains a submenu called Recently Closed Tabs.

    --
    You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
  8. Re:New tabs are great by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're doin' the Gnome/Linux thang*, open up the GConf editor and drill down through / -> desktop -> gnome -> interface. Change the key 'gtk_key_theme' to 'Emacs'. When you're focused on a textbox or the location bar, you get C-w, along with a bunch of other nifty stuff. My biggest complaint is that C-k deletes to the end of the line, but doesn't copy it into the clipboard.

    More information.

    * Dawg.

    --

    You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  9. Why wait? by BobPaul · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just get it now, without overwhelming specific mirrors:
    http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.htm l?product=firefox-2.0&os=win&lang=en-US/a

    I don't see this as a bad thing, as your still getting it the way they want (using the official link that selects a mirror for you) I'm just not waiting for them to post the link, so I wrote it myself ;)