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Firefox 2.0 Just Around the Corner

Firefox technology undergoes heavy development over at Mozilla as Firefox 2.0 is up for release. Mozilla has made considerable progress with the new version of their popular browser, and a second development release is available for testing, with many new features, as the next-generation open source browser races towards his very curtail battle against the next addition of Microsoft`s Internet Explorer.

Firefox 2.0 alpha 2 also introduces Amazon`s A9 OpenSearch search format approach for the open source browser, which has already been deployed in Microsoft`s IE 7 beta 2. Firefox includes an inline search function as part of its default browser. To date, Apple`s Sherlock search format has been the method used. IE 7 Beta 2 includes an inline search feature as well, though it uses OpenSearch as its format. The battle for space in the inline browser search box is already heating up, as Google has recently levied anti-competitive accusations against Microsoft.

Among the other new features in the Firefox beta is a new add-ons manager intended to improve the user experience of managing both themes, as well as browser extensions. Browser crashes are no longer a major cause of concern in Firefox, thanks to the new Session Restore feature, which is supposed to automatically restore a browsing session after a crash. According to the Firefox 2 schedule, alpha 2 is supposed to be feature complete. However, a number of features didn`t make it into the release, and an alpha 3 version is now set to pick up the outstanding features, such as safe browsing, which will offer a degree of protection against phishing-related sites.