stuart test blog

I’ve been using the new beta 1 version of Firefox 1.5 since it came out and so far I’m impressed. It’s extremely stable for a beta 1 product, and although you don’t notice any significant changes at first, there’s definitely been a whole heap of changes made under the hood.

The first thing you notice when you install beta 1 is that you will probably get told that your existing plugins aren’t compatible with the new Firefox. I was running All-in-one Gestures and the official Google Toolbar, and neither were compatible. Once installed I headed straight for the Options to see what has changed there – and this is the first big sign of the new version as shown here:

The actual options are all very similar to the previous version, but they are now laid out with the categories at the top. A new feature is the “Clear Private Data” locate under the tools menu. Clicking on this option opens the following box which is fairly self-explanatory:

Another new feature which I definitely like, is the new error pages for display on 404 errors and the like. This takes away the annoying pop-up boxes that show up in the previous version.

Not sure what my favourite new feature is yet, but another cool feature which I love is the ability to drag and drop tabs so that you can change the order of them. I often have ten to twenty tabs open at a time and it really helps to be able to move them around. So far, I’m really enjoying the new beta 1 and I haven’t found anything wrong with yet – I definitely recommend downloading and testing it today!