Irfan’s Corner on the Web On Mac, Linux, Grid, Virtualization and Software Technology

First Post from Firefox 2

This is my first post to my blog with Firefox2.

Using Firefox 2 has been nothing short of a blast for me! Its excellent. I've used IE 7, but it didn't appeal to me, because the main thing I like about Firefox, which I blogged about before, are its myriad extensions.

There are numerous enchancements in Firefox which appeal to me greatly.

1. Reduced memory foot print

Firefox 2 is more efficient with memory and runs more smoothly with a large number of opened tabs. I read somewhere, that someone comparing the memory footprint of IE7 with Firefox2 found that Firefox 2 took 30 MB less with a large number of tabs. Although IE 7 took less memory with less than 3 opened tabs. Since I always open a lot of tabs during browsing Firefox2 is for me!

3. More 'cleaner' GUI

The icons in Firefox 2 look more clean, and the entire GUI has been streamlined to have a "modern" look and feel. This is a great improvement over the previous look and feel, which resembled that of Motif's, and looked boring.

4. "List all Tabs" button

I would recommend people to use foXpos to get an easy thumbnail based overview over all opened tabs. However for those you require something simpler Firefox 2 adds a button at the top right corner below the search bar, which lists all the opened tabs, so that users can directly go to the required tab, . Its more productive especially is you have a large number of tabs open.

5. Built in Spell Checker

This features is probably not of much use, if you dont write much in the web browser, but for someone like, me you regularly blogs and uses Google's Doc & Spreadsheet for some word processing, this is a great feature. Although many websites like webbased email clients, blogging software etc. have spell check options, but they mostly have bloated interfaces, the Firefox2 spell checker is very simple.

6. Search Suggestions

Another great feature which I discovered in Firefox2, are the search suggestions. Like Google Suggest, where you type a word, and it displays all the relevant searches you might want to do. This feature has been integrated into the Firefox2 Search bar

7. Extreme customizability

Just look at this website to see what I mean. EVERYTHING in the firefox interface is customizable, you can remove anything, any menu, any toolbar icon etc. IE7 does not allow you to customize the interface to the extent that you can remove menus.

So these are just some of the usability features which I've discovered during my first use of Firefox2. With Firefox2, the open source community proves that it is capable of providing quality software which not even the biggest corporations can match! I fear that Microsoft will try to clone Firefox2 features into IE, so we must get the word out quickly, before Microsoft clones the features, and people start thinking that IE is "innovative"!