I promised I’d take the new Firefox 1.5 out for a spin and report back to you. So, here goes.
At first glance it appears nothing has changed. The user interface if almost identical to the previous public release of Firefox, and that means you will not have to spend much or any time getting acquainted to new features.
A closer look under the hood reveals some options have indeed changed. The menu dialog Tools - Options, now displays the Options window’s tabs tiled horizontally. It still remains familiar though. It will not be hard for you to locate older options you could set before, and even discover some new settings awaiting your input.
I am a little disappointed I couldn’t get Mozilla’s spellcheck libraries to work on this new version. A true disaster. Typos and spealleeng mestaykes will take over every single one of my posts now. Most of the Extensions for Firefox I use though (about 80% of them) had no problem functioning with the new version. And Extension compatibility shouldn’t really worry you, since I’m confident there will soon be updates for most Extensions.
I am very happy to see Firefox continues to pay attention to security, privacy, accessibility and web standards. Use the Sage Extension to have instant access to your favorite content via RSS. The built in Live Bookmarks function, allows you to see the latest headlines of your choice. The Bookmarks Manager allows you to easily maintain and manage a neat record of all your favorite website links. Tabs continue to allow you to visit multiple websites at the same time, without having to launch any new windows. Tab functionality is actually increased in this version. Annoying pop-ups are still blocked. In general, users have greater control over how the browser handles things.
Firefox continues to be my top choice in web browsing and if you haven’t tried it yet, get it here for free.
