Firefox 2.0 debuts Tuesday

Updated: Although scheduled for a public release on Tuesday, Mozilla has uploaded Firefox 2.0 to their FTP site Sunday night, you can get it now!  Download Firefox 2.0

Firefox 2.0, the free 5-megabyte browser now available in 39 languages, is set for a release on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006.  The fox will be showing off a new interface that improves usability, and will still support existing themes.  Built-in phishing protection is nice addition to the package as it will protect users from web forgeries.  This list will be automatically updated regularly.

Live Titles is a nice idea where web sites that constantly update their titles, will have the ability to change your bookmark with the new relevant title.  There is  a list of web sites hat support this, and more will be added through add-ons.

Make sure to check out this latest release on Tuesday!
Download Firefox 2.0 Here

However where as the original Firefox has some great improvements for the stale Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, it remains a constant debate what effect Firefox 2.0 will have on the browser landscape.  Running the beta versions for the last few months, I must admit, although it does have some noticeable speed and usability improvements, Firefox 2.0 seems more like a home improvement project, and less like a new house. 

It can of course be argued that it was already so far ahead of its time, that it required less work.  However I feel this was a huge missed opportunity to innovate and leap frog Microsoft.  Some nice new additions would have been site preferences.  The ability to set up certain web sites to be viewed in a certain way, vs other web sites.  The ability to "easily" set up groups of web sites would also be a huge feature.  I say easily because this feature is possible, but is simply not intuitive for your average user. 

Lastly a "Playback" and "Navigation Map" feature would be a huge benefit.  The ability to view how you actually surfed the Internet in an easy to follow site map, and to actually play back your site map if needed.  All these types of features would really leap frog a browser over the competition.

Firefox is a free, open-source web browser that runs on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.  Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 is also a free web browser, however not open source, and requires the user to have a licensed copy of Windows to install the application.