Firefox 2.0 has a spell checker built into its text boxes. Handy for blogging. It doesn't like the word "spellchecker."

Rand, it doesn't like a lot of words, but at least it allows you to add new words to the dictionary. I had an extension that did the same thing, but I think that this is a feature worthy of being built into the browser.

So far, 2.0 looks pretty good. I've downloaded IE 7, as well, but I don't see enough at this point to tempt me to go back. From where I'm sitting, IE 7 is an attempt to catch up with, not surpass, Firefox. With any luck, though, Microsoft's active return to the browser war will push Mozilla, Opera, et al. to add more goodies (though not more kludge!!!!) to our browsers.

For those who are more technically proficient, does the new Firefox seem less of a memory hog than the old one? It's hard to compare it with IE, simply because IE probably hides parts of its processes within the operating system.

My spelling and typing skills are lacking, so I am LOVING Firefox 2.0's spellcheck. There, "spellcheck" added to the Firefox dictionary.

Now I just need Mozilla to come up with "Grammar Checker" and "Fact Checker" extensions--I mean, add-ons--to make me the ideal blog commenter :)

What I do not like about Firefox 2 is the way they've chage how you close tabs. Before you closed your selected tab by clicking the "X" on the far right of teh window, now you close each tab by clicking the "X" on the tab you want to close. I'm so used to doing it the old way I keep closing the wrong tab now. And previously I could read tabbed pages right to left, closing each one as I finished by clicking the same "X" and never moving the mouse, now I have to move the mouse to each tab individually. I'm fine with others using it the new way if they like, but I wish they had left an option to choose between the new tab system and the old.

Yes, I've noticed that, too, Cecil. I was actually going to post on it, but hadn't gotten around to it. That's one of the things that wasn't broken that they didn't need to fix.

Do not despair. Lifehacker has a page on Firefox hacks that includes one for reverting the tab-closing method to the pre-2.0 format.

For those of you comfortable with mucking about with about:config, here's the fix:

Tab close buttons

Fx 2.0 only: Another tab interface change in Firefox 2 is the addition of a close button on each individual tab. I happen to love this, but some hate it, saying it causes them to accidentally close a tab when just trying to switch to it. If you're a hater, revert to the Firefox 1.5 behavior by changing the browser.tabs.closeButtons value to 3. This will not display close tabs on individual tabs, and turn on a single close tab button at the right end of the tab bar.

* Key: browser.tabs.closeButtons
* Modified Value: 3 (revert to Firefox 1.5 behavior)
* Alternate Modified Value: 2 (don't display any close tab buttons)
* Default: 1 (display close buttons on all tabs)

Fixed!
Thank you.
Now I really love Firefox 2!

Pro Libertate, Firefox 2.0 seems to be much better than firefox 1.x at memory management, by a significant margin.

P.S. I prefer the close button to be on each tab.

Thanks for the tabclosebutton fix!
Why on earth couldn't they put it in the menu to get the old interface... It's the single most annoying thing. They should have known that from the beta. No config editing should be necessary. The second issue is the lousy-looking themes. I want pinball.

I've been using Opera for a couple of months since the Firefox memory hogging really started to piss me off. Opera 9 has been technically superior, but I liked the interface in Firefox 1.whatever better, even when you can get some Firefox emulation in Opera. Opera has better, real fullscreen though.

More competition is better.

Of course, if they had a grammar checker, they would know that it should be a "spelling checker". Unless you live in the Buffyverse.

Interesting that you guys feel that way. I actually *prefer* the close button to be in the tab, maybe because I'm more used to that (Visual Studio does it that way, for example).

I'm split on where I want my tab-closing button to be. I've got it on each tab at work and the pre-2.0 way at home. I'll commit one of these days :)

I installed an extension to put a central "Close Current Tab" button on my toolbar, without eliminating the close button on the individual tabs. I often have a great many tabs open so depending on the circumstance I want one or the other.

There are other tab behaviors in FF2 I'm still getting used to, and I'm hoping Tab Mix Plus is updated soon so I can get my accustomed behaviors back.

Ever since I learned that you can middle-click on a tab to close it, I don't really care where the close button is, as it is faster to middle-click.

After I posted my last comment, I found that Tab Mix Plus is available in RC1 form from a forum linked on the creator's website, and it's working great for me so far.

I've been closing tabs in Firefox 1.x by middleclicking (clicking ths scrollwheel) for a while now, so an "x" in the tab will seem natural to me.

Yes the memory management is lots betting in FF2 but still not as robust as ie7. Although, if you leave IE7 open for about 12-24 hours then it eventually creeps up to the same level that FF2 uses. Now we just need the apt-get package support added to Ubuntu for FF2 and I'd be happy. I was able to manually install it but had a devil of a time getting the flash and mplayer plugins integrated properly. In fact, I can't get the java runtime to work with FF2 on Ubuntu for crap. I install manually or from the package manager and it just doesn't want to integrate. So, had to go back to 1.5....

There is a cute little easter egg if you type about:mozilla in the address bar.