For those of you who somehow missed the news, the long-awaited release of Firefox 2.0 is finally here, and so are optimized builds!
There’s a bunch of new features and fixes in this release, so instead of repeating what’s already been said I’ll just point interested parties to the Firefox 2.0 release notes.
Why is the name / icon different?
I really shouldn’t have to keep repeating this, but every time I post a new Firefox release I still seem to get people annoyed / pissed off / confused as to why these builds are missing the Firefox name and icon. So here comes the strong emphasis:
The Firefox name and icon are copyrighted and cannot be used with non-official builds. These are non-official builds, so they cannot have the official branding. Pretty straight-forward. Please don’t ask me to build versions with the official branding.
So, without further ado…
Downloads
Make sure to choose the build that matches your processor. If you’re not sure what processor you have in your machine you can find out this information in the “About this Mac” window (Apple menu > About this Mac).
Previous download links removed. A newer version of Firefox is now available.
Recommended downloads
Here’s a small list of extensions and whatnot that I highly recommend:
- Nightly Tester Tools: Every Firefox update means that some (if not all) of your extensions and themes break due to version incompatibility. This extension helps you to cajole extensions to work and helps baby firefoxes sleep well at night.
- Pinstripe theme | Aronnax’s Firefox themes: One of the big “new features” of Firefox 2.0 is a “visual refresh”. (How many “times” can I do “air rabbit ears” in one paragraph?) Anyway, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but I personally don’t get it. For those of you that cringe when they see Firefox’s new duds these themes may prove to be the panacea you were looking for.
- Tab Mix Plus: The new close tab buttons in Firefox 2.0 are a nice addition, but overall Firefox’s tab feature is still lacking that je ne sais quoi. (Does anyone else think the default Firefox tabs are too damn wide?) Tab Mix Plus makes Firefox’s tabs much more customizable and adds in a bunch of other nice features, too. This is a link to the development builds that are compatible with Firefox 2.0.
- Stop and Reload extension: Toolbar space is at a premium. This extension combines the stop and reload button into one, ala Safari. You’ll need to use the Nightly Tester Tools above to install this one as it hasn’t been updated for Firefox 2.0 yet.
- Fission: Puts the loading status indicator into the address bar ala Safari. I hated this when Safari was first released, but I’ve gotten used to it and now whenever I use a browser that doesn’t have this feature I miss it a lot.
- Do you like this theme I’ve been working on? If there’s enough interest I’ll get it fixed up for Firefox 2.0 and post it for download.
Posts on “essential extensions to use with Firefox” are seemingly a dime a dozen these days, so I’ll end here. Feel free to post in the comments any feedback, thoughts, rants, praises, or anything else that comes to mind that is Firefox-related.
Enjoy, folks!
(Who wants to lay money on when Firefox 2.0.1 will be released?)
Post-Digg update: Jumping jehosaphat, people, you just burned through over 150 gigabytes of bandwidth in just over 5 hours. Yikes. More here.
