After a short delay, Firefox 2 Beta 1 is here now and as expected it brings a more mature product over past Alphas (full reviews here and here). There are no biggies in this milestone. A couple of new features and minor changes to previous enhancements still make room for a fun review.

Microsummaries, a proposed technology for providing smarter bookmark titles has been improved with tighter and simpler integration. Now when you bookmark a web page for which a microsummary generator is available, the Add Bookmark dialog list it as an additional option for the bookmark name. Previously the microsummary option was displayed, no matter it really existed or not. Also, the microsummary can be manually updated by right clicking on the bookmark.

In the tab browsing department, main improvement is the addition of recovering closed tabs. Next time you accidentally close an open tab, just select Recently Closed Tabs in the History menu to restore them. You can right click on the tab bar and select Undo Close Tab. In my tests I could undo the last 10 closed tabs with no problem. Also, though by default the tab close button is present in all tabs, there’s now an option to show it only in the current tab or restore the previous style of having a single button for all tabs (a la 1.5).

Finally tab overflow is handled with a couple of scroll buttons placed at each edge of the tab bar. You can also use the mouse wheel to scroll the tab bar.

Plus, an option to require confirmation when opening many tabs at a time has been added to prevent accidentally overloading Firefox, like when clicking Open in tabs in a Live Bookmark.

Feed subscription options have been simplified. Clicking on the web feed icon displays the feed as a nicely formatted web page instead of subscribing directly.

Spell checking, introduced in Alpha 2, has been extended to cover design mode text boxes, which should be a welcome enhancement for bloggers and cute email composers.

Among other minor changes, the Go menu was renamed to the better fitting label History, while web developer oriented JavaScript Console was renamed Error Console. A new Subscribe to This Page option has been added to the Bookmarks menu, while the Check Mail… option has been removed from the Tools menu.

The add search engine confirmation dialog now displays the provider and adds an option to select it and go to the search bar in one step.

An option to report a phishing site has been added to the Help menu. Click on it and you are directed to a simple reporting form hosted by Google (Firefox ’s default anti-phishing provider).

JavaScript has been updated to 1.7, with a number of enhancements for web developers.

In the security front, support for SSL version 2 (a weak version of SSL dating back to 1994) has been dropped. If you encounter a web site that fails to load because of this, you should really contact the web master to let him know the problem and update his web server to the better SSL version 3 or TLS 1 (both supported by Firefox). However a workaround exists and I’ll publish it later as part of a number or tweaks for Firefox 2.

A new dialog window has been added to manage some security warnings.

Finally, and this one I am still trying to understand, Find as you type (FAYT) has been split into two different features: QuickFind and Find. QuickFind is most similar to FAYT, and rises a find bar as soon as you start typing within a web page. However, Previous, Next and Highlight all buttons have been removed and are available only for (full) Find function, which can be called from the Edit menu or with Ctrl + F hotkey. The rationale can be found here.

The next Beta should finally bring the planned default theme enhancements (sneak peek) in the works by Radiant Core, as well as an extreme makeover to the Options window that will make it more effective and clear. My guess is it should be available around mid August.

If you want to try this in-development version and won’t mind been bothered with bugs or incomplete user interface, you can get Firefox 2 Beta 1 (US English), here: Windows, MacOS X, Linux.

Other languages are available here.