Get Firefox 2 features now

Now that we know for sure what Firefox 2 will bring, you may want to try the enhanced experience some months before it finally arrives. Some of the new features are already available as extensions and here we’ll take a look at these

Feedview, allows Firefox 1.5 to display web feeds (RSS or Atom) as nicely formatted web pages instead of the raw XML code normally displayed. It even adds a slider to specify how muh of each feed item you want to display. Feedview, however doesn’t add an option to subscribe to that feed via another desktop or web application.

Spellbound has provided spell checking capabilities to Firefox for a while, however the official website of this extension hasn’t been updated in some time. A new version is being provided by Robert S. at the mozillaZine forums.

Tab X will add the close button to all tabs just like Firefox 2, however it lacks the criteria to hide them when there are too many (about 8 in a 1024 x 768 full screen display) and more necessary since the tabs became smaller and easier to mis-click.

Session Manager, a nice extension that not only provides session restoration (this is after a crash or passive restore) but you can also save and restore sessions at will (active restore). Personally I find the option of bookmarking a set of tabs (menu Bookmarks/Bookmark All Tabs..) enough for me, but there you go.

Microsummarizer, is the original proof of concept Myk Melez created for this feature that allows dynamic, descriptive titles for bookmarks.

Google Safe Browsing provides anti-phishing capabilities and is in fact the foundation for Firefox Safe Browsing feature (due for Alpha 3).

Of course, it’s not only about having the functionality but having it built in the browser code and go through Mozilla’s intensive quality assurance process and that’s what Firefox 2 will bring as well as some look and feel retouches, better security and less bugs.