from Playfuls.com – Science & Technology

Just when you thought Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta gets all the attention, the Mozilla Foundation comes with the long expected Beta 2.0 version of their popular Firefox browser.

It’s not actually officially launched, but you only have to wait until Wednesday, July 11, to be able to get your hands on it. If you can’t wait that long and IE doesn’t satisfy you in anymore, you should know that a public “release candidate” has been posted on the Mozilla FTP site . Still, the version posted there is not yet ready for mass utilization, although Mozilla specifies that the candidate is feature complete.

Among the early reviews and critics, two important new capabilities of Firefix 2.0 Beta are unanimously acclaimed: an integrated spell checker, and an anti-phishing tool. The spell-checker should help bloggers and forum members happy, since grammar and writing mistakes are going to be eliminated. As soon as you start to type into a textbox it will start spell checking. If it finds that you have made a mistake it will notify you by placing a red-squiggly line underneath the word.

Firefox 2.0 Beta follows the anti-phishing trend today (which IE 7.0 Beta inaugurated) and warns you about potentially dangerous sites, stored on local lists, or on Google’s site listing.

The interface is quite the same to the one we see in Firefox 1.5. Firefox 2.0 does include a horizontal scrolling capability for tabs, and an ability to close a tab directly from within the tab itself. The Options dialog has been reworked to include a horizontal, tabbed based interface, and numerous changes have been made under the hood.

According to a blogger on Digg.com Firefox 2.0 should also work fine on Mac Mini and probably on every Mac or Linux-powered machine.

Beware though of the fact that the new version will overwrite your currently installed themes and will render your actual extension unusable.

Still, if you are anxious to test it without affecting your present configuration a portable version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is ready and awaiting you here. The site says your profile is kept with the PortableFirefox folder so you don’t have to worry about messing up your other profile and the uninstallation process is simple…just delete the folder!

You can also find an interesting update on what is new in Firefox 2.0 Beta and also a tweaking guide here .

Win
ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2006-07-07-19-firefox2.0b1/firefox-2.0b1.en-US.win32.installer.exe

Mac
ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2006-07-07-19-firefox2.0b1/firefox-2.0b1.en-US.mac.dmg