


Although many of the new features are available with plug-ins anyway, this is still a rip-roaring browser and consolidates Firefox’s position as the best browser on the market by miles. Whilst the recently released Internet Explorer 7 is only just introducing tabbed browsing, Firefox 2.0 is already taking internet surfing to a new level. This resulted in frequent crashes, keyboard head-banging and violent swearing. The legendary memory leak also still doesn’t seem to have been fixed as Firefox continues to guzzle processing power. The extension incompatibility issue is the main drawback although this will change as developers update their plugins over the coming weeks and months. It’s now also simple to inspect popup windows (implemented by WebExtension) using DevTools ( bug ). Note: web-ext npm package needs to be > 7.3.0. The automatic session retrieval option (previously available with the Tab Mix Plus plugin) is also a tonic when your system crashes or you’ve got too many tabs open and Firefox cripples under the strain. There is a new argument allowing you to also automatically open DevTools just in case you want tofor example, inspect the UI ( bug ).

One of the most useful features we found was a predictive search function within the Google toolbar that would suggest potential phrases and popular search terms as you typed. Other goodies include enhanced tabbed browsing (each with their own close option finally), the ability to un-close tabs, search plug-in/add-on manager, and much, much more. Amongst the security highlights of 2.0 are anti-phishing support which helps the browser discriminate between genuine websites and those intended to store and retrieve your personal information.
