Paul Thurrott wrote a quick little article about Firefox 2 today where he says that this release “is a dud.” It may not have as many new features as I would have liked to see but it is far from a dud in my mind.
He begins his article explaining that he is actually a Firefox user so he isn’t trying to say that it is an inferior browser. He is instead trying to express his disappointment in what should have been a better release:
I don’t like it. The new Firefox “visual refresh” replaces the previously clean Firefox UI with muddy and vague-looking icons, so one of the first things I did was download a theme that returned the old Firefox 1.5 look and feel. The built-in phishing protection is truly third-rate. There are two anti-phishing options: Mozilla’s weak blacklist-based protection (yes, seriously) or and Google’s anti-phishing technology, the latter of which is both poorly rated and a privacy nightmare. The new Options dialog is a miasma of options, some of which are hidden in embedded tab controls. It’s ugly, confusing, and illogical.
…
Firefox 2.0 is free, but it’s a woefully minor improvement over Firefox 1.5 that suffers from various incompatibility issues, especially with themes and other add-ons. I can’t say I recommend it all, to be honest. I’ll be sticking with Firefox 1.5 at least for now. I recommend you do the same, or switch to the surprisingly solid IE 7.
Some of the points that Paul states are reasonable but many are more of his opinion than anything. While some people will obviously not like the new theme I actually love it. It gives Firefox a fresh look and helps it fit in better with Windows Vista.
Paul hasn’t written a review at his Windows SuperSite yet but he said that he will soon. I am actually anxious to read the full review because he always does a thorough job explaining what he thinks, which is something this article obviously lacks. He lists the things that he is disappointed in but doesn’t give much insight as to what would make them better.
I think he’s missing that fact that a lot of changes were made “under the hood”
For me, 1.5 crashed almost twice everyday. Right now 2.0 hasn’t crashed once!
Whahahahaha!!! Kidding??
OK, FX 2.0 have less improvements over FX 1.5, than IE 7.0 over IE 6.0. But… are you kidding? You should compare NOT improvements, but OVERALL VALUE of release products. And look what we have then:
1. IE7 is one-and-half times better than IE6.
2. FX 2.0 is four times better than IE 7.0 and six times better than IE6.
3. And FX 1.5 is three times better than IE 7.0 (!!!), and about four-five times better than IE6.
Thats my opinion.
Maybe Paul Thurrott is a dud
Well, my FF 1.5 does not crash,even with loads of TABS… i’m happy with 1.5.0.7 cus it’s stable.
I’ll dl 2.0 when all my exts get update, including my theme.
@SLA: you’re right, you should not compare them like that.
FF2.0 is much more stable and faster than 1.5.X.X
I can agree on Thurrott that the ‘options’ are a mess
Just like most of you have mentioned here Firefox 2 has extreme improvements in stability. Not to mention the large number of memory leaks that were fixed.
He would make a good movie critic as he must have only used the product for a few minutes before writing his review.
I’m afraid I may need to agree about the options page. Although the Fx2 options reduce sub-tabs that must be sifted thru, I liked always knowing I could easily find downloads, cookies, cache, history, forms, and passwords in Fx1.5. Since the old Privacy tab has been disbanded, it does get a little annoying having to guess at Privacy, Security, or Advanced tabs.
Otherwise, Fx2 is undoubtedly an improvement worth updating to