One of the things I like about the Mozilla group a lot is that when they are about to release an update, or a new software, they give you dozens of earlier builds for you to keep track of the improvements and slowly get used to them. With their alpha version of Firefox 1.1, code-named Deer Park, already available to the public in it’s Alpha 2 form (only a couple of weeks after the Alpha 1 came out), it’s probably only a matter of one or two weeks before we have the Release Candidates or the final version out.
Let’s see the improvements that are expected:
- Preferences window got a nice makeover and was reorganized
- Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater)
- Improvements to popup blocking (Always welcome!)
- Faster browsing with “Fast Back” and “Fast Forward”
- Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs (Another extension that I won’t be needing)
- Image thumbnails as tab icons
- Software ‘Patch’ System (thanks tollie)
- Better CSS support (thanks Riddle)
Besides these, they’re also taking some measures so that it’s easier for developers to register their extensions and themes and so that you can rollback an upgrade you did to any extension in case there’s something wrong with it.
It’s the kind of motivation that Mozilla has for always striving to improve their products and give their users a better experience that earns it the “love” of thousands of users like myself. And it’s nice to see that they listen to what their users want and take care of every platform they adopt for their programs.
What’s coming in the future? Well for the 1.5 version we will be seeing a few tweaks done to the download manager and customizable toolbars (Yahoo Bar, Google Bar, etc.) but until then, expect plenty of more tweaks and features made for our favorite browser.
Firefox rules!!!
That pretty much sums it up yes. By the way, is it just me, or are they using Longhorn? (Or a themed XP)
well, I like the current setting panel more. logic says its better to have the options vertically then horizontally IMHO.
What the hell happened to the highlights over ‘general’ ‘privacy’ ‘web features’ etc.? It’s a carry-over from one of Jacob Nielsen‘s web usability caveat: Users want to know where the hell they are, whether it’s on the web or within their own browser.
Hmmm good point, but it will probably be fixed by the time it’s released, if not, I’m certain someone will patch or alert Mozilla of that flaw.
We still have one more round to go: Deer Park Beta. Until then, it is better to avoid saying “coming soon”. :-P
I’ve also heard from someone with a beta copy that it will work on sites such as http://www.bungie.net which currently suffer from really laggy scrolling.
By days between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2, you meant almost two weeks, right? Maybe it’s just me, but when you say days in this context, I think of three to five or six.
Also, you didn’t mention anything about the Software Updates ‘patch’ system, where there will be no need to reinstall Firefox in order to apply updates. That’s a key feature driving 1.1.
And I don’t follow you on what you think is coming for 1.5. Firefox has a download manager – they just want to change how it works. It has customizable toolbars too – they’re just worried about the problems that plagued IE with having too many toolbars installed too easily.
Sorry,
You forgot to write about better CSS support. That’s the improvement I’m looking forward the most.
Sorry for leaving out alot of stuff, I’ll edit in a few momments. Seems I did not research well enough, gomenasai ;)