I’ve been running the latest alpha builds (read, don’t try this at home unless you are really sure you can risk stability on your browser) of the upcoming FireFox2 (due out in September code named “Bon Echo”) for the last few weeks. There are a few things I would like to mention about it, and then compare it to the latest beta of Internet Explorer 7 for those who are interested.
The new Firefox2 has brought improved stability, and compatibility to my browser when playing media files (both in Linux and Windows). Which is amazing considering it is in the alpha phase of development. Also, it improves the search bar located in the upper right corner, by adding the suggesting searches as you type. I’m not sure how this is accomplished but it is particularly cool.
Also, my favorite feature is the new spell checking that is built into all text boxes on a page, so right now while writing this blog, I’m getting little red squiggly lines under my typos and misspellings.
All in all it feels just a little quicker, a little faster to load, and has some very subtle changes in the look of it to make it interesting, and like IE7 they are trying to add better anti-phising filters into it.
Now, IE7 promises tabs, and some stupid feature where you can look at all the tabs as mini-thumbnails, and the new anti-phising stuff. It is somewhat slow, it looks a lot different (the moved the “File” other menus to the left under the address bar), and while it is an improvement over IE6, it fails to address many of the failures of IE6 to properly render webpages. Fortunately it does support PNG transparency which is a god-send for people who like their webpages to look good, and have some transparency effects.
I believe that when firefox 2 comes out it is going to be a bigger improvement than anyone originally anticipated, and with firefox 3 in simultaneous development I believe that IE7 isn’t going to see a major reclaiming of the browser market-share it lost to firefox. I think spell-checking text-boxes is brilliant, and eliminates much of the need for client software for posting LJ or other blog entries, and it actually works even better than gmail’s AJAX equivalent for writing emails.
If you want to check out this project and maybe download it for yourself take a gander at this link
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/
Beta 1 is due out early next month if you want to wait for a little more polished code.