Firefox 2 hits the Web

25.10.2006
The next generation of the open source Firefox Web browser, version 2.0, has been released and is sporting a slew of feature and security enhancements.

What began as a sub-project of the Mozilla browser and communications suite, Firefox is now in its third major release cycle after versions 1.0 and 1.5, and has risen to become a significant competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Visually, the Firefox 2 theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience, according to Mozilla.

As one of the first browsers to include tabbed browsing, Firefox will now by default open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button.

"Power users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip that let them scroll back and forth between their tabs," according to Mozilla. "The History menu will keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab."

Furthermore, it is now possible to resume a browsing session with the "session restore" feature which restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads.