Les Jones: I Am in Lurrrrv w/ Firefox 2.0

April 10, 2007

Tech > I Am in Lurrrrv w/ Firefox 2.0

After asking if it was stable I gave Firefox 2.0 a try. I'm hooked. Here's what's new.

The built-in spelling checker is better than the old SpellBound plug-in, which got gradually flakier and didn't always work.
I'm not much of an RSS person, but I like the ability to click on the RSS icon to preview a site's RSS feed. (Here's mine.) There are also new options for subscribing to RSS feeds.
Tab handling is ... different. Each tab gets its own close button. Tabs stay about the same size up to a point, and then begin scrolling left to right, rather than shrinking as in 1.5. There's a new tab dropdown menu on the right. The tab handling is different and probably better, but it's taking me a bit to adapt. UPDATE: Check out Jonathan's advice in comments on how to change the tab settings.
Session restore. If your computer crashes Firefox offers to restore your previous tab set when you relaunch it. That feature has already saved me lots of heartache and is pretty much single-handedly makes the upgrade worthwhile.
Likewise, under the History menu there's a "Recently Closed Tabs" menu item that's a potential life saver. Select the tab you closed and Firefox restores it to its previous state.

Seriously. Go download it. It's free. Your money back if not delighted.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

I'm not in love with the close buttons on each tab. They put those there for noobs, who didn't know to look to the far right to close the tabs. I think it just adds clutter, and I turned it off as soon as I downloaded it.

Of course I also downloaded dozens of extensions to make it even more fun to use, but that's just me.

Posted by: jonathan hickman at April 10, 2007

all the new stuff was available on the old as add-ons. I used tab mix.

I don't like one thing about 2.0: my shortcut keys in word press (alt + L for hyperlink, for example) don't work.

Posted by: SayUncle at April 10, 2007

Jonathan, how do you turn off the individual tab close buttons?

Uncle, probably true, but SpellBound just gradually stopped working right for me. I could intentionally misspell words and it wouldn't flag them.

Posted by: Les Jones at April 10, 2007

Well, like SU, I use tab mix plus to deal with stuff like that.

But if I didn't, I'd look here.

It's really easy & will only take 15 seconds.

Posted by: jonathan hickman at April 10, 2007

I should add, in case it's not clear:

You go to about:config (ie type that into the url bar and hit enter). Then you find the pref mentioned in that article and do what it says - double click and change the 1 to whichever option you like best - prob 3.

Posted by: jonathan hickman at April 10, 2007

That's exactly what I wanted. Gracias.

Posted by: Les Jones at April 10, 2007