It's clear to me that there are pandemic memory problems in Firefox, and also that Mozilla has not responded adequately to them. But this is still my browser of choice. I can't wait for 2.0 -- even if it will lack the Places site-search functionality, which Mozilla recently decided not to implement in Firefox 2.0. Frankly, I never bought into Places, whose concept was to let you run a search that will check your bookmarks and browser history ' the idea being to help you find a site you know you've visited in the recent past. But if you know the site well enough to search for it by keyword, just Google it. No?

There are other features Firefox is more in need of. Heck, I'd just like a Bookmarks manager that doesn't make drag-and-drop moves of bookmarks, bookmark folders and separators nearly a spectator sport. There are many things that are a bit twitchy in Firefox. Improve and extend. Whole new modules whose advantage aren't slam-dunk obvious probably aren't the right approach for what is still a very young application with huge potential. And it's still fun to use.

Scot Finnie has been an editor for a variety of IT publications for more than 20 years, and this article originally appeared in his newsletter. It is reprinted by permission.