The end of October saw two milestones in the browser world. Microsoft finally got Internet Explorer 7 out the door, while Mozilla released Firefox 2, the latest version of the open source browser. This week we'll take a first look at Firefox, while Microsoft's futile effort to keep up will be saved for next week.
Firefox has enjoyed success in gaining market share in 2006. At the BugBlog, the market share for the various versions of Firefox are now up to 33 percent; at another site where I'm webmaster, which has a mostly MBA/economist/"people in suits" readership, it has a 12 percent market share, which is probably closer to its total in the overall marketplace. At Blogcritics, which has a more general audience than these other sites, the Firefox market share is around 20 percent.
As a webmaster, one of the first things I check when a new browser comes out is whether it breaks one of my sites. I've got some older, table-based layouts as well as new XHTML and CSS-based designs, and I was happy to see that they all worked. That's probably because I stay away from any of the more advanced hacks in doing layouts. In any case, you shouldn't really see much of a change in how a site renders between Firefox 1.5.x and Firefox 2.0.
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is not a huge leap forward. That's mostly because Mozilla has been issuing new releases fairly steadily, and is actually planning a Firefox 3.0 sometime in 2007. The first thing you will notice is a new default theme for the icons and toolbars, which comes from the Radiant Core design firm in Toronto, Canada. If you don't like the new visual look it doesn't really matter, since there are many more themes you can apply to change the visual style of the browser.
Article comments
1 - Bob Jones
How about reviewing a decent browser: Opera?
2 - Bob Jones
I want to add "In terms of usability, safety, and updates".
Usability? Thats opinion, you're entitled to have yours.
Safety? Not true, Secunia have shown that all vunerabilities in Opera have been patched, same can not be said of Firefox.
Updates? Check past record, Opera release faster than others (not only new versions, but security fixes).
Take off those foxy-colored glasses and see the real picture.
3 - elsa
38% of my readers use firefox. This was a great review.
4 - Daniel Goldman
Just to add to what Bob mentioned in the comment above. I'm aware that this is a Firefox 2 review, but it would be nice if you would've mentioned that the 'close' button on each tab and the session restore freature are both Opera inventions, Firefox just copied them to Firefox 2.
We have had the session restore feature for quite some time already.
5 - Christopher Rose
Actually, the close button and session saver were on Firefox 1.x for some time, albeit as add-ons.
Aren't browsers a bit like political parties? Even though there are lots of them, only two really count?
6 - Bruce Kratofil
If any Opera fan wishes to write a review of their favorite browser, go ahead. This review of Firefox 2.0, is not a history of the web browser, and is not meant to be a comprehensive browser shoot-out, either.
7 - Phillip Winn
Opera fans, enjoy your browser and pour your time and energy into something more likely, like ending world poverty, or curing cancer.
X buttons on each tab have been in both Firefox (via extension) and Safari for years, too. So? Ditto session saving.
1% of the visitors to this site use Opera, and most of them, I suspect, are visiting reviews of other web browsers in order to demand equal time. Firefox 2 has been out a week, and already has twice as many users visiting here. MSIE7 is already at triple.
I've tilted at windmills (and for that matter, used Opera) before, so trust me when I tell you it's a lost cause. Enjoy the browser, don't mind all the efforts being poured into mobile, and move on!
8 - Clavos
Bruce writes:
Unfortunately, in the (almost) two weeks that I've been using Firefox 2, I've had four crashes involving three different sites.
Since I upgraded from FF 1.5.08 about a week or ten days ago, I'm averaging that many "hangs" per day with 2.0; all of them right here on BC, and all of them requiring shutting down FF and then reloading it. A real PITA.
Anybody else experiencing the same situation? Any ideas for fixing?
I've looked for a download of 1.5 to go back to, but of course Mozilla is only offering 2.0 now. If I can go back, I will; I'm not at all happy with 2.0 at this point.
9 - Bruce Kratofil
None of my crashes have come from here (Blogcritics), they've all been other places. I think I've only had one more.
It would appear that any time I've had a crash, it's been at a page that used web services to pull some content (such as ads) from a different site.
Actually, I have the setup file for 1.5.0.3 still sitting on my computer -- can you handle a 5 MB email attachment?
10 - Clavos
Thanks, Bruce.
I think I may have scared it when I wrote that comment; it hasn't hung on me since :>)
I'll keep struggling with it for now, but I appreciate your offer.
11 - Mig
I actually went back to 1.5 after all the 2.0 crashes. It was freezing up four or five times per day and I don't have any fancy plugins. (And it happened when I disabled them all anyway.) It wasn't site consistent for me. I would restore the session and continue. Amazon crashed a few times but it wasn't something I could reproduce or predict. Bad.
You can download Firefox 1.5.0.8 from Mozilla here.