I’m excited to announce that Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 is available! If no glaring bugs are found in the release candidate, it should become the live release within a week or two.

I haven’t found anything really new in RC1. It’s pretty much just a cleaned up version of Betas 1 and 2. In case you didn’t read my last post, the new features include an improved options panel, faster back and forward navigation, a slick new auto-updater, shiny new error pages, a new “clear private data” dialog, and drag-n-drop browser tabs. I’m excited for this to be coming out of beta so I can recommend it to all my friends. It really is a marked improvement over the 1.0.x series.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 changes all that with a slew of new bells and whistles, including a super-simple “Clear Private Data” dialog, better popup blocking, drag and drop re-orderable tabs, quicker back and forward navigation, and a shiny new automatic update system.

Additional updates include better support for CSS2 and CSS3, support for scalable vector graphics and JavaScript 1.6, and improved accessibility for screen readers. Especially spiffy are the pretty new error pages. No longer will modal message boxes alert you of broken pages and nonexistent domains.

I’m mildly dissappointed that several of my extensions haven’t yet been updated:

* ForecastFox
* HTML Validator (based on Tidy)
* Stop-or-Reload Button
* IE View
* ReloadEvery
* All-in-One Gestures
* BBCode
* Timestamp
* Web Developer
* Wikipedia

All-in-all, though, this is a great release. I can’t wait until it comes out of beta.

It probably won’t show up on auto-update for a few days, so if you like being on the leading edge, you should download it from the web. Happy browsing!

Edit @ 4:30pm: A friend here at work noticed the automatic update icon on his Firefox toolbar just now. Looks like they are pushing it today afterall.

* The Fox Is in Microsoft’s Henhouse (and Salivating)

If you don’t want to register with NYT, you can read the full article on “c|net News.com”:http://news.com.com/The+fox+is+in+Microsofts+henhouse+and+salivating/2100-1032_3-5497057.html.

First off, “Thunderbird 1.0″:http://www.getthunderbird.com has been released. I haven’t noticed much in the way of new features since 0.7, but it seems to be extremely stable and sports a stylish new default theme (although that may have debuted in version 0.9, which I somehow completely skipped over).

In other Mozilla news, the “New York Times Firefox 1.0 ad is finally finished”:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/8538. It should appear in the paper during the next week or so. I’ll definitely be picking me up a copy.

I may be the last one on the planet to have done so, but I discovered the Google Blog the other day. Unlike so many others on the web, I’m not even going to mention the new “Google Suggest”:http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en — wait, did I just mention it? Oh, well. Incidentally, my “Google Suggest number”:http://www.jerrykindall.com/2004/12/10_google_suggest_number.asp is 7.0.1.

In other Google news, “Froogle”:http://www.froogle.com now lets users set up a shopping list and a public wish list. This is great for those random items Amazon doesn’t carry. If you’re thinking about getting me something for Christmas, be sure to check my new “Froogle wish list”:http://froogle.google.com/shoppinglist?a=SWL&id=c5180a2fde6d5461dbbcff249566f23421e17.

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After much anticipation, Mozilla Firefox was released today — no longer a “technology preview,” but a full-blown, stable release version. More amazing than that, for the first time I was able to run a flawless update using the new updater!

I couldn’t be more excited about this release. It’s great to be able to whole-heartedly recommend Firefox to friends without having to explain what a technology preview is and answer the inevitable question, “If it’s just a preview, does that mean it’s not stable?”. I’m confident this new release will kick the browser war up to a new level.

Have you rediscovered the web, yet? You have no more excuse. Do it today!

I’ll probably wait to install it tomorrow morning. I should have a little time then to write a review if I find any new features/bug fixes worth mentioning.

bq. Joey… in two words, what is the best thing about firefox? My friend is looking over my shoulder, and I’m not the biggest advocate… I’m not even sure why I use it, but I do.

The ensuing conversation was a lot of fun, and we both agreed that the “two word” format was effective and entertaining. He also asked that I post the list on my site as a ready reference.

Here it is:

* More secure.
* Tabbed browsing.
* Popup blocker.
* Standards compliant.

After these first four, my friend asked me:

bq. Most other browsers do better than IE in those cases. Why firefox over other browsers?

Here’s how I answered:

* Open source.

“Opera”:http://www.opera.com, arguably Firefox’s biggest competitor besides IE, is not free. It is ad supported, but can be purchased for a small fee if you don’t want the ads.

* Platform independent.

Many other browsers (open source or not) are only built for one operating system. “Safari”:http://www.apple.com/safari and “OmniWeb”:http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb are only available for Mac OS, “Konqueror”:http://www.konqueror.org and “Galeon”:http://galeon.sourceforge.net are only available for Linux, and IE is only available on Windows and Mac OS (but they haven’t released a new version for either platform in at least 3 years).

* Experienced developers.

Many of the Mozilla developers were part of the same bunch that created Netscape. At that, my friend asked me if there was still a version of Netscape available.

I replied:

* Frequent updates.

Yes, there’s another Netscape which was recently updated after a two year hiatus, but it will never be updated again.

He then asked me:

bq. Is there another regular Mozilla?

To which I answered:

* Small footprint.

Yes, there’s another Mozilla. Mozilla App Suite 1.8 will be released soon, but it’s bloated. It’s got _way_ too many features, many of which are not used often enough or by enough users to justify inclusion in the program. The download is huge and the browser is a kludgy resource-hog.

Firefox (under most circumstances) runs faster than IE and takes up less memory. The download is a mere 4.6 MB.

Last but not least, I added:

* “Cute mascot”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda.

I hope this was fun and informative for others who read my site. If you’re a Firefox advocate, feel free to submit your own “two words” in the comment form below.