Web browse on the Mac used to be trammel mostly to using Internet Explorer , with few other options . No more . Every Mac ships with a first - rate web internet browser , Apple ’s Safari ( ) , while third - party browsers from Camino ( ) , OmniWeb ( ) , and Opera ( ) are all excellent options . Firefox 2.0 , the latest departure from the Mozilla Foundation , is another keen web browser that Mac users can add together to their armory .
Firefox 2 sports a bevy of raw features , among the most utile of which is a new Phishing Protection tool . Firefox flashes an alarm whenever you lumber onto a known phishing site and — since most phishing sites are not up for very long — it update its black book of distrust phishing situation every half hour . Though it ’s impossible to track every cozenage out there , Firefox ’s Phishing Protection feature article work well every clock time I followed a link from a phisher . It ’s a groovy security measure feature that ought to be ramp up into every web browser app .
A live spell checking function is another great young feature . Like Safari , Firefox now has the ability to check your spelling as you typewrite , underlining misspelled words in red . Even better , in Firefox it ’s on by default . ( Safari users must apply Control - click or go through the Edit menu to initiate a spell check . ) Right - clicking on a misspelled word in Firefox will bring up a list of suggestions , as well as an option to total the word to the browser app ’s dictionary . It ’s a groovy time saver , ensuring that your eastward - chain armor , blog entries , and other Web - base communications are error - gratis without have to take an extra gradation .
Session Restore is another decent addition . If Firefox crash , or you have to force quit , when you restart , the programme ask if you want to fix your previous session . Doing so make for back all your old tabs and windows .
Other new features let in a Search Engine Manager , which allows you to bring , remove , and reorder the search engines that will show up in Firefox ’s hunting accounting entry field . Feed handling is better in Firefox 2 than in any other web web browser I ’ve used ; you may tell Firefox to manage RSS and Atom feeds , or send off them to an online reader or standalone practical program . A new Add - ons Manager makes it easier to control which extension — like ad blocking agent or scripting tools such as Greasemonkey ( an extension that let you control the style specific Web sites look and function)—are turned on and off . I base the raw Live Titles sport to be less useful . Live Titles adds information like BBC newspaper headline or Yahoo stock quotation mark to your web browser ’s bookmarks cake . To me , this seems like a Greco-Roman example of web web browser bloat .
Firefox 2 also changes the way tabs are handle . Instead of opening new web browser windows , Firefox now launch new tabs in the same window by nonpayment . In addition , the picture you use to close individual pages is located on the tab , instead of in the quoin of the browser app windowpane , as it was in late version . While these may seem like small-scale details , they makes for a much more usable web internet browser .
Generally speaking , Firefox 2 is degraded and unchanging . But , a few performance differences popped up when test on Intel and PowerPC systems . On both the PowerBook and Mac mini G4 I used for examination , I found that I had to force quit on several occasions for shut Firefox down , in particular when I had several extensions enabled or a lot of tabs open . ( This happened more often on the Mac miniskirt , with its lean allotment of 512 megabyte of RAM . ) Otherwise , it was trouble - gratuitous . Firefox launch just as speedily as Camino , and slimly quicker than Safari on an Intel system . On PowerPC system , Firefox take slightly longer to load than Safari ( an additional two to four minute ) , yet it was or so equivalent to Camino ’s shipment time . However , overall Sir Frederick Handley Page rendered cursorily on both systems , and Firefox treat script - intensive sites , such as the Yahoo Maps page , with poise .
One sphere where Firefox 2 still fail to perform is in meeting Web standards . When I ranThe Web Standards Project ’s Acid 2 Test , Firefox failed to render the page correctly . Safari handled this labor perfectly . On the other hired man , while I know of several land site that do n’t support Safari , I failed to find any that did n’t like Firefox . So , while meeting standards would be decent , it is not enough to turn me off .
Macworld’s buying advice
Since it ’s a gratis download , there ’s no reason not to give Firefox 2 a try . With its array of available extensions , Firefox is a highly customizable web browser and an first-class one to use if you want to bar Web pop - up ads .
[ Mathew Honan write about technology forMacworld , Wired , andThe National Journal Technology Daily . ]
