Download Mozilla Firefox 2 alpha 1

A_L points us to the first development milestone of Firefox 2, the latest branch of the cross-platform internet browser. This release goes through life as alpha 1 and is from here for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. ‘Bon Echo’, the code name of alpha 1, has been released for testing purposes only and is not suitable for end users. The developers of the Firefox 2 industry have rolled up their sleeves and introduced a number of new features. For example, the bookmarks and history are stored in an SQLite database and each tab has a separate close button. In addition, the developers have improved the support of extensions and the development milestone has been carried out with Googles Safe Browsingextension, which should provide protection against phishing sites.

Mozilla Firefox is the slim version of the open source browsers Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey. The surfing program was previously known as Phoenix and Firebird, but because these names seemed practically the same as two other open source programs, Mozilla decided to change the name. Firefox makes browsing a lot easier with a built-in pop-up blocker, the ability to browse using tabs, and extend functionality through extensions. In addition, login details of forums and websites can also be saved, which are then automatically filled in every time you visit the page. What the exact changes are in the new Firefox is not yet announcedbut the following release notes can be found on Mozilla’s site:

Changes in this Development Milestone:

• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
• New data storage layer for bookmarks and history (using SQLlite)
• Extended search plug-in 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

Known issues

Extensions
• Extensions installed under previous versions of Firefox may be incompatible with Bon Echo Alpha 1.

History and Bookmarks

• This release is intended to test the backend infrastructure and importing. Most of the user interface changes are in flux and testing is not needed at this point. Note that the new bookmarks and history storage for this release are separate from the previous versions, so if data corruption happens, you can still go back to Firefox 1.5 and have the old data.