What's new in Firefox 2.0

12.07.2006
It's a new day for Mozilla. Only a few days after OneStat reported that its Firefox Web browser has reached nearly 13% market share worldwide, the open-source software development organization this morning released Beta 1 of Firefox 2.0 (see Firefox use growing around the world, study says). With this release, Firefox devotees will be widely testing the next version of the browser.

According to scheduling documents linked to from the Mozilla site, the developers expect Beta 2 to arrive in about four weeks, followed by two or three release candidates during early September, and a possible final release of Firefox 2.0 on Sept. 26. Of course, all of these milestone dates are subject to change. But with the release of Beta 1, Firefox 2.0's final release is no longer a distant eventuality.

To test Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 for yourself, download the one in your preferred platform version and language at the Mozilla FTP site, or use these direct download links for U.S. English versions:

- Windows (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0b1/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%202.0%20Beta%201.exe)

- Linux (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0b1/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-2.0b1.tar.gz)

- Macintosh (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0b1/mac/en-US/Firefox%202.0%20Beta%201.dmg)