I’ve been using Firefox 2.0 for a few weeks now and have seen some good things and some not-so-good things. With the recent RC 3 release we are likely very close to the final release the public will see.
In honour of Stephen Colbert, I thought I’d ‘Tip My Hat’ to the Firefox engineers, but sadly I need to ‘Wag My Finger’ too.
Tip Of My Hat: TextArea Spell Checking
It was so nice writing a blog comment today and seeing that I fat-fingered the word “submit”. Up until recently, I have been copying all my comments into TextMate just to see if everything was spelt correctly.
Tip Of My Hat: Easy Tab Navigation
I really like the new layout of tabs in Firefox 2.0. I could always rely on the hotkeys, but the new dropdown overview feels natural.
Wag Of My Finger: No Support For Mac OS X Disk Images
It is so sad that Firefox 2.0 still can’t recognize the standard OS X distribution package. Just pop open Finder automatically.
Wag Of My Finger: Lame Phishing Protection
Firefox has followed Microsoft’s lead with their ‘phishing protection’. Mozilla and Google are more interested in tracking your online activity than they are in your safety. Default permit approaches are one of the six dumbest ideas in computer science.
The existing Firefox Password Manager uses a default deny approach and is capable of fighting phishing; why don’t they market it instead? It is because Google wants their own Alexa traffic rating system without forcing users to install any spyware toolbars.
Wag Of My Finger: Ugly Default Theme Icons
Okay, okay - I know this is a subjective “eye of the beholder” argument, but after switching to OS X I have drank the kool-aid and expect everything to be beautiful. The toolbar icons look dirty and uninviting.
Tip Of My Hat: Close Tab Icon
It’s nice to see I no longer need an extension to add the close tab icon to each tab.
Wag Of My Finger: Separate Icons For Stop / Refresh
Sadly I still need an extension to combine the Stop & Refresh action buttons. I prefer the Safari approach that toggles the button action depending on the state of the page.
Conclusion
All things considered, the Firefox 2.0 release is a good improvement over the previous version. I’m sure Windows users will appreciate that Firefox is keeping up with Internet Explorer.
For Mac OS X users, however, there are so many good alternatives that it is becoming increasingly hard to stay loyal to Firefox.
