Firefox 2.0 Officially Released
Many readers wrote in to make sure we all knew that Firefox 2.0 has officially been released on Mozilla.com, unlike yesterday's early preview. Here are builds for all languages and Win/Linux/Mac, and the release notes.
I have been using Firefox 2.0 for a day now. I can't really see how this warrants a 2.0 release. It seems like there should be more added features and innovation that we have come to expect from the Mozilla team to jump to 2.0. Don't get me wrong, I love the software and I have converted just about everyone I know to Firefox. This is a Solid release, but maybe a 1.6 or something.
Firefox 1.x made a reasonable attempt at mimicking the interface of OS X using XUL. Sure, its contextual menus weren't slightly transucent and some of its metrics were slightly off, but it didn't look completely out of place on the system. Firefox 2.0 has thrown away the Aqua interface and replaced it with some generic chrome which looks rather poor per se, but is especially jarring on Mac OS X.
I hope someone comes up with a decent Aqua skin, but it still doesn't make any sense to force users to resort to skinning just to make a program fit with the default system interface. The Mac build of Firefox should look like a Mac program by default; skinning should be for those people who want to make it look like a pink christmas tree or whatever.
Please do not bother mentioning Camino: it lacks support for Firefox extensions, which are the only reason I have for using Firefox.