Software update: Mozilla 1.8 alpha 1

The first alpha version of the 1.8 branch of the open source browser Mozilla has been released. This suite includes a browser, email client, and an IRC client. As usual, it is recommended that you remove any previous installation of Mozilla, including extensions remove before installing this release. The changelog with all fixed bugs is here below are the main changes to this alpha:

browser

• 1.8 Alpha1 includes keyboard accessibility for the Mozilla Help window and improved keyboard accessibility for the Linux installer.
• Find in This Page now also searches inside textarea and text input boxes.
• Basic FTP upload UI has been added to Mozilla.
• Intellimouse Explorer Backwards and Forwards buttons are now supported on Linux.
• “Close Other Tabs” now has a confirmation dialog similar to closing a browser window with multiple tabs open.

Mail

• Mozilla 1.8 Alpha1 has UI for multiple identity support.
• Junk mail filtering accuracy has been further improved.
• Users now have an option to mark incoming junk mail as read.
• Preferred mail format (plain text or HTML) is collected and remembered in the Personal Address Book.
• The Mail window menus have been adjusted to improve usability and resizing the mail window no longer resizes the folderpane.
• News now supports displaying the size column in KB or in Lines (via a hidden pref).
• Server wide news filters have been implemented.
• LDAP v3 support has been added.
• Addressbook auto-completion has been improved.
• 1.8a1 fixes an issue with listboxes that caused mail to display multiple attachments incorrectly. Additionally, mail sorting scrolls to keep the currently selected message in view.

Under the Hood

• Mozilla now has support for CSS2 quotes.
• The XUL Tree widget has undergone significant changes. You read more about that here
• The number of cookies Mozilla will hold has been dramatically increased and a hidden pref added for the few users who need even more.

[break]Mozilla 1.8 alpha 1 is available in the following flavors:

• Win32 full installer
• Win32 zip file
• MacOS X disk image
• Linux (x86) full installer
• Linux (x86) tarball