firefoxOctober 27, 2006 12:18 pm
A few more Firefox 2 notes
A few things I didn’t mention when I blogged yesterday…
Extensions
I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were compatible versions available for most of my extensions. In fact, of those extensions which lacked updates, most of their functionality is now available in Firefox directly.I moved from Tabbrowser Preferences to Tab Mix Plus after reading that it fit better with 2.0. Having said that, the version of Tab Mix Plus for FF2 is an experimental one, while there is an official version of Tabbrowser Preferences for 2.0. I have been impressed with TMP so far, though.
Depending on your choice of extensions, your experience may be different. However, I use a fairly extensive range, and I haven’t found any show-stoppers yet.
SVG
Firefox 2.0 has improved its implementation of SVG and fixed a number bugs. It seems to do an admirable job, but still doesn’t provide a complete implementation. I have wondered whether support for Flash could be implemented by using an XSLT stylesheet to transform the SWF into SVG. Some JavaScript may be needed for interactivity, and maybe some SMIL for audio. That would make it unnecessary to download the non-Free Flash plugin. Of course, it may the case that the two formats are simply too incompatible.Feel
Firefox 2 gives the impression of feeling more polished, and seems more comfortable to use. However, the improved functionality of the new versions of the extensions may be responsible for a good portion of this.I do think that the improvements are worth the upgrade, and I’m relieved to find that I haven’t been left wondering why I did.
Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Michael J Kaye.
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