Firefox 2, First Impressions

So I have now installed and have been using Firefox 2 for the last two hours. Here are my first impressions in short hand.

• Installing was a breeze (as you might expect)
• The process of making my extensions work was also fairly easy
• The seamless importing of my bookmarks and extensions was appreciated
• I had no trouble with my theme that I love working as an update was made (Noia 2.0 (eXtreme). Ironically I am yet to see the new default theme in action.
• I did have some trouble getting the Tool Bar for RoboForm to be put back where I last saw it. I ended up having to install a new version and it seemed to just appear. I have no idea as to if this was a compatibility issue or something else.
• I especially like the integration of my RSS reader into Firefox. This is a nice touch as it adds to the accessibility of RSS feeds to users, for me it just makes life a lot easier.
• The auto fill for searching is great and seems to work, although I have not used it a lot yet
• Better management of the search plugins is good. Previously deleting a search was acomplished with an “addon” (I hate the new name for extensions!)
• I hate the red X in the tabs, as I said in a previous post you can close tabs with a middle click (mouse wheel) and I could not see the point of putting it in. It makes my theme look a little dirty and not quite as slick
• The extra security features are a nice inclusion and the more advanced settings appreciated
• But by far my most appreciated and most used feature in the last two hours is the inbuilt spell checker for typed words on a page, in real time. I can not spell – period. This feature works in comments, blog posting in an AJAX interface, just about everything! So far has been right every time! I love it. I sincerely hope that in time this feature improves with country specific dictionaries and such. Although at present you can add words to a custom dictionary

While there is a lot more that could be said, these are the things that have struck me over the last couple of hours. I like Firefox 2 and I am looking forward to using the features. Damn this spell check is good, post spell checked already…

Great work from the Mozilla crew yet again. The best browser just got better.

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