Firefox 2.0 review

Okay, I’ve been using the new Firefox 2.0 release for a few days now, and I have to say that I disagree with what many people have been saying about it. Right now, Firefox has around 13% of the browser market, and the big question is: does FF2 have enough to continue to win over new users, especially given Microsoft’s new IE7? I think so.
Beyond improved performance and security, plus the elimination of memory leak problems and a few known bugs, the main draw to FF2 would be the new features.
The first big thing for me was spell check. You have no idea how cool it is until you try it–trust me. Spell something wrong in an online form and it’s underlined in red. You can then right click on it and choose from a list of possible corrections, just like in an office application. Here’s a screen shot of it in action.
Another big improvement for me was an auto-complete feature for the built-in search. This works much like Google complete, and it’s a big help.
What everyone has been talking about, however, is the RSS integration. When you navigate to a page that contains an RSS feed, the RSS icon lights up. You can then choose to follow the feed with either live bookmarks or with your favorite online reader. I don’t use RSS much, myself, so I can’t really judge how helpful it is, but it seems like an improvement to me.
Of course there are many more features, such as opening new window and target=”_blank” links in tabs by default, and the built-in anti-phishing protection, but these are beyond the scope of this review.
These may not seem like vast improvements, especially compared to all the extensions you can get, but after using FF2 for a few days I can say that they are significant (especially the spell check). While FF2 may not be ahead by quite as much as before, Internet Explorer still has a ways to go.