Download Mozilla Firefox 2.0 beta 1

Mozilla’s developers have just released the first beta of Firefox’s new 2.0 branch released. This new release can be downloaded from this ftp directory for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and follows the third alpha version as a public test version. A few days ago the first signs of a possible release candidate appeared on Mozilla’s ftp server, but three different builds were already in the running. Now the developers have dropped the “Release Candidate” designation and the build in question has been upgraded to beta.

Firefox 2, also known as ‘Bon Echo’, is a cross platform open source browser for the web and includes a number of new features and improvements over the current Firefox 1 family. For example, each tab has a separate close button. In addition, the developers have improved the support of extensions and this development milestone has been completed with Googles Safe Browsingextension, which should provide protection against phishing sites. In addition, it is also the intention that, just like in Firefox 2.0 alpha 3, new features such as the bookmark software microsummaries and support for ‘client side session and persistent storage‘. The next version of Firefox 2.0 is also scheduled to be released on August 11. This version will be a second beta with some bug fixes that have yet to be tested. Until then, we’ll have to make do with the first beta version, whose release notes look like this:

Firefox 2 Beta 1 is a developer preview release of our next generation Firefox browser and it is being made available for testing purposes only. Firefox 2 Beta 1 is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox 1.x should not use Firefox 2 Beta 1 and expect all of their extensions and plugins to work properly.

There is a lot in Firefox 2 Beta 1 that we invite you to play around with and give us feedback on:

• Built in Phishing Protection.
• Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
• Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
• New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
• New Windows installer based on NullSoft Scriptable Install System
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath