Talkings of a Tyrant

I’ve tried Firefox 1.5, and it rocks!

It has been out for a few days, but I didn’t use it at first. Apparently my favorite extension in the whole wide world, PasswordMaker wasn’t compatible with it (I couldn’t access any of my sites without it). However, Eric H. Jung, the developer of the extension, quickly released a compatible version, and so I updated.

Now, I don’t suggest that the common end-user (the average John Q. Public) download Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate, as it isn’t completely bug-free. However, if you’re the adventurous type, feel free to download it.

There are many new features. My personal favorite is the feature to clear personal data at will. Just click “Tools” and then “Clear Private Data.” You can then choose from several things which one you want to clear (such as cache and history).

The updating system (which was practically non-existent in 1.0.x) has been streamlined and is much better. Previously, to update from 1.0.6 to 1.0.7, you would have to download the whole 4.7 megabyte file. Now it comes in the form of patches. Updating extensions and themes is now a breeze too.

Before you had to download an extension to reorder your tabs. Now it comes preset with the ability to drag-and-drop your tags into any order you want. Useful.

However, seeing as it still isn’t a complete release, there are many extensions that aren’t compatible with Firefox 1.5 If you must have Greasemonkey, then don’t upgrade - there isn’t a release for 1.5 yet. Probably true with a host of other extensions also.

There really aren’t all that many new features. But it is much faster. Especially the back and forward buttons - they are now lightning fast. Go download FasterFox for an even faster experience (for either 1.0.x or 1.5).

With the new updating system in place, we should be seeing a lot more releases a lot sooner down the road. Stay tuned for the full release sometime in, probably, December!