Mozilla Set To Take Firefox 2.0 Final Tuesday

Mozilla Corp. will launch the final of its Firefox 2.0 browser Tuesday, Oct. 24, the company said Monday.

The long-tested Firefox 2.0 -- which updated to Release Candidate 3 (RC3) -- last Tuesday, arrives hard on the heels of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. IE 7 went final on Wednesday.

Firefox 2.0 features anti-phishing alerts, session restore, spell checking, suggested searches, and several other enhancement and additions to version 1.5, the last major update to the open-source browser. According to the most recent statistics from Web metric firm Net Applications, Mozilla browsers accounted for 12.5 percent of the surfing market in September.

"2.0 has about a dozen major improvements across the board," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's director of engineering. "Our goal is always to get you to the important part, the content in the middle of the frame, as quickly as possible."

Firefox 2.0, said Schroepfer, runs fine as is on Windows Vista, but the development team will "add more Vista-specific features to the browser" in 2007.Users who have already downloaded and installed Firefox 2.0 RC3 will not need to re-download the browser, added Schroepfer, because the RC3 code is identical to what Mozilla is dubbing the final.