SillyDog701

[Antony]

Mozilla Firefox version 2.0 is still in development, and for the those brave enough to try the pre-beta software, Firefox 2.0 Alpha is now available on Mozilla FTP server.

ArsTechnia has a nice review on Firefox 2.0 Alpha.

Version 2.0 has a handful of new features. One of the more interesting features is the revamped places menu, which is accessible from the bookmarks toolbar. Clicking on that brings up a box that will allow you to search your history, bookmarks, and RSS subscriptions for a keyword. Very useful if you remember reading about something interesting earlier in the day and need to quickly locate the web page again. Aesthetically speaking, there are a few minor tweaks to the UI, such as Xs on inactive tabs for easy closing.

Firefox 2.0 Alpha
Firefox 2.0 Alpha
Firefox 2.0 Alpha

According to Asa Dotzler, this isn't an official release.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.9.2

[beanboy89]

It is worth noting that these builds are not official releases, like some web sites have incorreclty reported; official releases will be posted in the [tt]pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases[/tt] directory of ftp.mozilla.org. These current "2.0a1" builds that everyone seems to be linking to, are bleeding-edge tinderbox (hourly) builds with the very latest code, so be prepared for possible incompatible extensions, many bugs, and crashes.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

[Fulvio]

What about .zip files for these nightlies. I am game enough to try, but not to install.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Moonpossum Firefox/1.5.0.1

[beanboy89]

What about .zip files for these nightlies. I am game enough to try, but not to install.

Here is firefox-2.0a1.en-US.win32.zip from the Pacifica tinderbox or you could use a regular Firefox 2.0a1 nighly, which includes ZIP builds. http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... ozilla1.8/

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

[Fulvio]

Thank you. So, FF2.0a1 is based on rv.1.8?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20050914 K-Meleon/0.9

[Fulvio]

So, it is based on the 1.8.
Should anyone care, I am using a defunct profile, after removing all extentions, and cleaning up the prefs.js file.
Interesting. Were is the Mail icon? Did they forget it, or did I lose it?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060320 Firefox/2.0a1

[J-M]

ArsTechnia has a nice review on Firefox 2.0 Alpha.

Ars Technica (with space used) is that high quality site.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; fi; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Pu7o]

It's somewhat odd that the Gecko 1.8.x based nightlies are called "Firefox/2.0a1" and the Gecko 1.9 based nightlies are called "Firefox/1.6a1"

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060319 Firefox/2.0a1

[beanboy89]

It's somewhat odd that the Gecko 1.8.x based nightlies are called "Firefox/2.0a1" and the Gecko 1.9 based nightlies are called "Firefox/1.6a1"

The trunk nightlys are still being called 1.6a1, because when the 1.8 branch was created, and the trunk's version was bumped from "1.0+" to "1.6a1," and the Gecko 1.8 branch was only going to be Firefox 1.5.x. Firefox 2.0 would have been Gecko 1.9-based. But then the decision was made to put Firefox 2.0 on the Gecko 1.8 branch, leaving Firefox 3.0 on Gecko 1.9.

Since then, I guess no one ever bothered to bump the version on the trunk from 1.6a1 to 3.0a1, probably because most of the devs were focusing on getting Firefox 1.5 ready for release. Strangely, Thunderbird trunk buils are labled as "3.0a1."

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

[Pu7o]

That still makes it odd that Firefox is being named 1.5.0.x instead of 1.5.x. If Gecko 1.8.x is for Firefox 2, then where's Firefox 1.5.1 coming from?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060319 Firefox/2.0a1

[Fulvio]

I had made the same observation. but, more than anything else, i would like to know if I am the only one missing access to mail from whatever this thing is, or is that a general issue. Was it just that nightly?
I am not using 2.0a1, in case someone may wonder, but I did before.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060321 SeaMonkey/1.5a

[beanboy89]

That still makes it odd that Firefox is being named 1.5.0.x instead of 1.5.x. If Gecko 1.8.x is for Firefox 2, then where's Firefox 1.5.1 coming from?

I recall hearing that Firefox 1.5.0.x (Gecko 1.8.0.x) would be for security and stibility updates, then Firefox 1.5.x (Gecko 1.8.x) would be for new features. I also remember reading that Firefox 1.5 updates (i.e.1.5.0.1) were versioned so not to break extension compatibility.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

[Pu7o]

I don't have a Mail button on my Firefox 2.0a1 either, or a "Read Mail" entry in Tools.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060319 Firefox/2.0a1

[beanboy89]

It looks like Mozilla Bug 306453 removed the "Read Mail" and Mail Button.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

[beanboy89]

According to Asa Doltzer, Firefox 2.0 alpha 1 has been officially released.

Today, we're making availble for testing the BonEcho Alpha 1 milestone. This developer build is the first of many developer milestones on the path to Firefox 2.

This is _alpha_ code, folks, not beta, and definitely not ready for regular people. These builds might disintegrate, incinerate, pulverise, shred, or melt your hard drive -- and to top it off, we don't offer any support for BonEcho either

Release Notes

Here are some new features in Bon Echo Alpha 1 that require feedback:

* Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
* New data storage layer for bookmarks and history (using SQLlite)
* Extended search plugin format
* Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
* Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
* List of notable bug fixes

Downloads:
Linux tar.gx file
Mac OS X disk image
Windows installer

FTP directory mirrors

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0