Several other additions and functional underpinnings round out Firefox 2.0. The new Add-Ons Manager combines extensions and themes, and adds a new Restart Firefox button to help people remember to do this for newly installed extensions and themes to take effect. A new search dialog makes it easier to change your default search engine provider, and to add additional providers. The Search box is wider, and you can move it around the tool bar area. It also offers a type-ahead drop-down list of previously searched terms.

Invisible additions include support for JavaScript 17, support for client-side session and persistent storage, updates to the extension system and a new Windows installer. Improvements to memory usage was a goal in earlier documents, but it's not clear whether Mozilla has been able to do that.

It's too early to draw final conclusions about Firefox 2.0, but Mozilla hasn't moved backward in any of the changes it's making to the browser. It's not a dramatically improved version. At first blush, it looks no different. But the collection of small additions and improvements make it a decidedly better browser than the 1.x versions. Think of it as a return volley to Microsoft's IE7 (itself not a dramatic upgrade) and you've got the sense of Firefox 2.0. Even so, you'll likely prefer the new Mozilla browser over the old one almost immediately.