Firefox upgrade offers improved usability, security

Users will find significant enhancements in usability, performance, extensibility, security and privacy in the upcoming test version of Firefox 1.5, the first major upgrade of the popular open source browser since the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November of last year.

Beta 1 of Firefox 1.5 will become available for free download either late Thursday or early Friday, according to an official from Mozilla, the subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that is charged with developing, marketing and distributing Mozilla products.

Code-named Deer Park, Firefox 1.5 will have a second beta version, slated for Oct. 5, and then very possibly two or three follow-up releases, starting in late October. A final version will probably launched in November or December of this year after the early releases, said Chris Beard, head of products and marketing at Mozilla Corp.

The beta releases are primarily aimed at software developers for testing and feedback, but anyone interested will be able to download the software, Beard said. The follow-up versions, called "release candidates," are closer to what the finished product will be.

After years of absolute dominance of the browser market by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Firefox has emerged as an alternative, and has between 7 percent and 8 percent of usage market share, according to various market research studies.

"We've had a pretty successful year following the launch of Firefox 1.0 and we're continuing to see very strong demand," Beard said. Mozilla estimates there are between 40 million and 50 million active Firefox users, defined as those who use the browser on a daily basis, and the browser is downloaded hundreds of thousands of times every day, he said.

Although Firefox's adopters are predominantly technically savvy users, mainstream adoption has been increasing, and version 1.5 is expected to help further the browser's popularity among the nontechnical, Beard said.

Beta 1 of Firefox 1.5 will offer faster Web-site navigation, due to advanced capabilities for caching and pre-rendering content, he said.

The product's tabbed browsing feature has also been improved by making it possible for users to rearrange pages by dragging and dropping them, he said.

Another improved feature is the Live Bookmarks, which lets users bookmark RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom content syndication feeds. Live Bookmarks' ability to detect the presence of feeds on Web sites has been sharpened, and the browser will now flash an icon in the URL bar if the site being visited offers a feed or feeds, he said.

In terms of security and privacy, the biggest improvement is an automated update feature to make it easy for users to keep their browser current with the latest improvements and patches available for it, Beard said. For example, with the current version users have to download the entire browser again to get updates, but with Firefox 1.5 users will be able to simply download the patches, making the process faster, he said.

The updates will be downloaded in the background in bits and pieces at a time, so as to not interfere with the browsing experience, and users will be prompted to install them once the patch has been completely downloaded, he said.

Moreover, the automated update feature also will take into account the add-ins a user has installed on a browser, to ensure compatibility between the updates to the browser and the extensions, he said.