October 24th, 2006 marks the official release of Firefox 2.0. It boasts a wide array of new features in security, user interface, and overall usability on all platforms. Among these are an entirely new graphic user interface (GUI), built in phishing protection, more reliable tabbed browsing, a new way to manage Add-ons, and an inline spell checker that works anywhere you input text. With Windows Internet Explorer 7 integrating a majority of the features from Firefox 1.5, it’s perfect timing for Mozilla to step it up and stay in the game.

The first thing you’ll notice when launching Firefox will be the brand new GUI. It has an OS X/Vista like interface and is much smoother than the previous version. Some of the other changes are rather subtle, but all of them enhance the experience in someway or another. I’ll be the first to admit that when Mozilla released their preview of the interface a few months back, I detested it. But now that I’ve been using it I couldn’t go back to the older skin if they forced me. Of course the beauty of the Firefox GUI is that they offer plenty of themes to change your experience completely.

Mozilla has tweaked the options menu and the way it handles features like tabbed browsing, giving us the ability to make customizations without a lot of extensions. The most noticeable improvement is that now links to new pages open by default in a new tab. RSS Feed management now resides in the options menu with its own tab. That seeming small change is not only useful for those who are already using RSS feeds, but makes the feature more inviting to those who do not. They have also added the ability to have certain bookmarks show the latest headline as the title, making it easy to keep an eye on frequently visited web pages that have the feature. We also now have the option for Firefox to show us our previously displayed tabs on launch, rather than a specific homepage. That said, Firefox’s tabbed browsing is much smarter than the previous generation, and the experience integrates well with your new “History” menu.

The “Go” menu of previous editions of Firefox has been replaced with the “History” menu. Previously, when you accidentally closed a tab in Firefox the only way to go back to it was to search through your history and hope you could find that page. That may sound easy, but it was always tedious if you had visited several pages on one particular site. With Firefox 2.0 all you have to do is go to History>>Recently Closed Tabs>>(name of site). Not only will this bring you back to the page you had been on, but all of the history in the back button remains in tact and ready for you to surf through.

One of the most beloved features of the Firefox user interface is the built-in search box. Focusing again on customization, Mozilla has made it easier to add and remove search engine choices. What was once the “Add Engine” link has become “Manage Search Engines.” This entirely new options dialog makes it easy to add search engines from Mozilla’s site and remove those included with the browser. This new dialogue also has a “Show search suggestions” check box that is enabled by default. With this option enabled, Firefox makes suggestions as you type, very similar to Spotlight in OS X.

Management of themes and extensions has been completely reworked as well. Both are now in one “Add-ons” section under “Tools.” Merging the two was an obvious choice, but they didn’t stop there. Now when you install a new extension or theme, Firefox will present you with a “Restart Firefox” button, performing a “silent” install. Your websites and tabs will all stay as they were while installing or uninstalling your favorite goodies to Firefox.

Now lastly, my favorite new feature: the inline spell checker. Mozilla has taken a functionality everyone is familiar within word processing and made it available in everything we do on the web. It’s simple, it’s clean, and it’s seamlessly integrated into the GUI. Just as you would in OpenOffice or Microsoft Word, right click on a word with a red line under it to see spelling suggestions. It works like a charm, and using it for more than an hour will make it difficult for anyone to switch to a browser that doesn’t have that feature.

With the improved performance and customization features, Firefox 2.0 is a major step towards becoming the most user-friendly browser available. There is still much work to be done, and some features that we still need extensions for. There are some options that it seems obvious that they should have been included, for example being able to set search and address bar entries show up in a new tab, changing the position of the tab bar to top or bottom of the screen, and the ability to sync bookmarks with online bookmarking sites. Despite those few lacking features, Firefox 2 is a great browser, and things can only get better from here.