Mozilla’s Firefox appeared nearly two years ago as the first real alternative to the domination of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It was built from the remains of the old Netscape internet browser, which gives it a good pedigree and means that it’s actually older, in parts, than Internet Explorer.
Its chief claim to fame is that it is open source and built almost entirely by volunteers. The open source tag means that it’s not covered by strict copyrights, so anyone can use, copy and modify Firefox, as long as they don’t make money from it.
Firefox 2 doesn’t add many features but that’s mainly because Firefox 1 was such a leap from Internet Explorer that there’s now not much to add.
The tabbed browsing has been enhanced, with the ability to save the current open tabs when you quit the program, and have it reopen the same tabs next time. This feature used to be available as an add-on, but now it’s been brought into the main program, and Firefox is all the better for it. Add-ons (previously called Extensions) are small programs written by other programmers to add features to Firefox. A popular one is AdBlock Plus, which can cut out annoying pop-up ads.
That’s the real strength of Firefox — the ability to fully customise the browser. It gets slow when there are lots (more than 10, say) of add-ons running, but it’s still very useable. To combat this, the session management tool, which remembers and reloads websites should the browser be closed accidentally, has been integrated into the main browser.
The two other big new features are a phishing blocker, which keeps a regularly updated list of bad sites and warns when a user tries to visit them, and a spell checker that automatically marks up spelling errors in a user’s written text. Other than these, the browser is faster and, supposedly, less bug-prone. We had a few problems with crashes in the last edition, but none so far, so we’ll continue to see whether that’s the case.
Verdict 5 stars
It’s hard to improve on a winning product, and that’s what Firefox is. The improvements are small but they add to the already excellent experience. And since it’s free, we certainly recommend giving Firefox a try. Mozilla Firefox 2 is a faster, safer and more versatile alternative to Internet Explorer 7
Price: Free
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