While I was away on vacation Mozilla Firefox Preview Release 1 was released. This is the last incremental release before the milestone release of Firefox 1.0 (due in the last quarter of 2004), and I must say that some of the new features are pretty cool. Three major new features are:
- Live Bookmarks: “a new technology in Firefox that lets you view RSS news and blog headlines in the bookmarks toolbar or bookmarks menu.” Although I use a separate RSS reader (Awasu), this is a pretty cool addition. Any site that has an RSS feed (and the appropriate <link> code in the header) displays an orange RSS button in the bottom status bar that allows you to add it as a live bookmark; you’ll see it on this site once you’ve upgraded. I need to explore this more to see how I like it…
- Find Bar: The new find bar that pops up in the bottom status bar when you hit “Control-F” is very useful. I found out that type-ahead search is not gone with this addition, just disabled unless you enable it under advanced options.
- Plugin Installer and Updater: The new plugin installer is initially annoying in the way it stops you from installing extensions (likely to prevent unintentional installation), but once you add the domain in question (mozdev.org and update.mozilla.org are two good sources) to the “allowed” list via the convenient menu that pops up, you’re back in business. Not all extensions have been ported to this new version, although when you first install PR1 it will search for updates and install them as necessary. This updater is much improved, and is a godsend for keeping the latest extensions (as well as the current Firefox version) up to date. I think I eventually found newer versions (or replacements) for all of my favorite extensions.
Speaking of extensions, Flexbeta has a nice series of pages summarizing some essential extensions, supplementing the ones I recommended in several posts.<!– Spread Firefox – Igniting the web –>
Accompanying this release of Mozilla Firefox PR1 are the new releases of Thunderbird 0.8 and Mozilla Suite 1.7.3. I don’t use the suite anymore, but the new version of Thunderbird has some nice new features, including RSS support (which I’m not sure I like), better handling of POP accounts, and better search features.
