A sneak peak at Firefox and Thunderbird 1.1

Firefox 1.1

Firefox 1.1 is the first major milestone on the way to Firefox 2.0. Firefox 1.5, planned for sometime in 2006, is the second milestone, with 2.0 being the final milestone. Overall, the 1.1 release isn't a radical change from 1.0, but there are some pleasant new features to look forward to, and a few user interface changes as well.

The "Preferences" dialog has been modified quite a bit, which may throw users at first, but the overall layout seems a bit more logical. Some of the finer-grained controls have gone away, which may or may not be seen as a good thing. For example, in Firefox 1.0, users can disable specific JavaScript features such as "Move or resize existing windows," "Hide the status bar," and so forth. Firefox 1.1 gives users the option to enable JavaScript and then the option to "disable common annoyances." Firefox 1.1 also adds a "Tabs" dialog dealing with all of the tab functions in Firefox. The new Preferences dialog, and the new Thunderbird dialog, is very similar in layout to Apple's Safari browser Preferences dialog.

There is a new tool to quickly remove information from Firefox, called "Sanitize." One can choose to clear browsing history, saved form information, download history, cache, cookies and saved passwords with a hotkey or by choosing the "Sanitize" option from the tools menu. Sanitize is configurable, so one can choose to erase download history, cache and browsing history, for example, without erasing saved passwords or cookies. Users also have the option of erasing these items each time Firefox is shut down. This is a very useful option for those who share computers with other family members, roommates and co-workers.

Firefox 1.1 also improves browsing pages in the cache, so browsing forward and backward seems much faster than in Firefox 1.0. Granted, Firefox 1.0 isn't terribly slow, but even a few seconds improves the user experience drastically.

Users will also be able to report "broken" websites using Firefox 1.1. The release includes a "Report a Broken Web Site" wizard which provides the URL, a list of possible problems ("Browser not supported," "Can't log in," "Plugin not showing," and so forth) and a field to describe the problem in full. According to the Privacy Policy page for the feature, the Mozilla team will use this feature to work with webmasters to correct interoperability problems with Firefox. Whether the feature will actually encourage webmasters to fix the problems is another story.

The "Cookies" dialog has changed somewhat. Cookies are now organized in folders by site, and users can search to find the cookies that they're looking for rather than scrolling through the list, which can be handy if one has accumulated a long list of cookies.

Despite its alpha status, we didn't run into any serious glitches, crashes or other nastiness using Firefox 1.1. This writer plans to continue using Firefox 1.1 alpha as his primary browser, since it has proven to be stable (at least over the past three days) and offers some modest improvements over the 1.0 release.

Thunderbird

As with Firefox 1.1, there are no drastic interface changes or radical feature changes slated for Thunderbird 1.1, but there are a number of interesting improvements and new features that will make the upgrade worthwhile.

One spiffy new feature slated for 1.1, and working fine in the alpha release, is the "inline" spelling checker that underlines misspelled words (or words not yet in Thunderbird's dictionary) while you type. Thunderbird 1.0 does have spelling checking, but not as you type. Thunderbird also allows the user to add a word to the dictionary, or ignore it, on the fly by right-clicking on the word.

The Preferences dialog for Thunderbird has also been reworked, and is similar to the new Preferences dialog for Firefox. Users can now get to the "about:config" interface for Thunderbird easily, by going to the "Advanced" tab and selecting "Config editor." Several of the features in 1.1 seem to be inspired by Thunderbird extensions. The RSS features, and the "about:config" access are both available for Thunderbird 1.0 as extensions, for example. It will be interesting to see if the Mozilla developers manage to keep Thunderbird and Firefox free of the kitchen-sink syndrome that plagued the Mozilla suite. We're not suggesting these should only be available as extensions, but we do hope the Mozilla team will resist adding in popular functionality from extensions in order to keep Firefox and Thunderbird lean and allow users to pick and choose the extensions they desire.

Users who wish to use Thunderbird as an RSS reader will like the OPML import capability in Thunderbird 1.1. We tested Thunderbird with an OPML file exported from Bloglines with more than 130 feeds. Thunderbird handled it gracefully, and imported all the feeds with no apparent problems. There should be an "export" capability in the final 1.1 release, but it is not in the current release.

Thunderbird 1.1 will also come with features to help users avoid being scammed by phishing attacks. We didn't actually get any phishing scams to test this out with Thunderbird, but the client is supposed to display a warning message if a message looks like a phishing attack.

Again, as with Firefox's alpha, the Thunderbird alpha handled well enough that this writer will probably employ it for day to day use -- while making regular backups of mail, just in case.

The Firefox roadmap calls for a second alpha release in June, and a beta and final 1.1 release sometime later this year. The Thunderbird roadmap calls for a final 1.1 release in June, but that may need to be pushed back since the alpha release is only a few days old.