It looks like the long awaited Firefox 2.0 will be released on Tuesday according to news reports.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/289490_firefox21.html
This is following closely on the heels of Microsoft releasing Internet Explorer 7 last week:
http://news.digitaltrends.com/article11561.html
I've loaded RC3 of Firefox, and I've got IE7 installed on a few systems. Here are some of my reactions to what I've seen so far.
The install of both browsers went fairly smooth. Firefox closed all open Firefox windows, and completed the install without issue. Internet Explorer took substantially longer to install, and required Windows XP to reboot. Opening Internet Explorer for the first time I noticed a substantially different look. This is sure to confuse those who are used to the standard IE interface that has been virtually unchanged for the last 5 years.
Microsoft has pulled in functionality that has been available in Firefox for years, and has actually improved upon it in my opinion. There is a tab preview screen that shows miniature screenshots of all open tabs. You can click on the screen you want to bring it forward.
Microsoft also turns Cleartype on by default which may improve the way text is rendered on websites. I will be interested to see how this alters web design considerations in the future.
Microsoft has also added some new features such as a quick "zoom" feature located in the bottom right of the status bar. Increasing the number zooms in on the entire site proportionally, even the graphics. This will be a handy feature when showing off a site. There is also a new "Phishing Filter" which I'm guessing is supposed to protect against phishing scams, but since I don't tend to have an issue with that, I'm not sure how much of an improvement this feature is.
There is now a shortcut to delete your browsing history in Internet Explorer (Tools -> Delete Browsing History). I'm not sure this is much of an improvement, but I'm sure some people browsing things they shouldn't be will find it handy.
There is one feature that I really like that has been added in IE7, the ability to quickly and easily manage Add-ons. It was far too easy for an application to hijack your system by attaching itself to Internet Explorer before. Now you can quickly (Tools -> Manage Add-ons) remove a troublesome application that might cause browser instability.
The new default locations for the toolbars in IE7 don't make a whole lot of sense to me. They left the favorites, back, and forward buttons off to the left, and moved everything else off to the far right-side of the browser. So far with the little toying I've done, it doesn't look like you can move them from these locations.
Now for Firefox, there aren't nearly as many readily apparent changes to the browser. There are some slight changes to the way tabbed browsing is handled in v2.0. There is also a new anti-phishing technology to prevent the deceptive disclosure of personal information. It restores windows, tabs, in-progress downloads and text typed into online forms if any of those are interrupted by a system crash. And it corrects the spelling of words entered on Web pages.
Quite handy for things such as blog postings. The look and feel of Firefox has also been much improved in my opinion.
The next few weeks will bring quite a few changes to the browser wars. I've begun using both of them in usability testing for new web development to make sure everything continues to work as it should. Hopefully these new updates will bring some of the guesswork out of CSS functionality and other differences between browsers. What do you think?