Firefox hit its second major milestone Tuesday with the release of version 1.5, arriving just over a year after the alternative browser debuted at 1.0. The update sports Mozilla’s new Gecko 1.8 rendering engine to speed up Web surfing, along with a myriad of other fixes and improvements.
Notable changes in Firefox 1.5 include the ability to reorder tabs, faster back and forward buttons, a feature to clear personal data, improved accessibility and popup blocking, along with support for more Web standards such as SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6. Firefox 1.5 is available now for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Mozilla Firefox project (formerly Firebird, which was formerly Phoenix) is a redesign of Mozilla’s browser component, written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. It includes a popup blocker, tabbed browsing, a smarter search, hassle free downloading, and improved privacy and security.
Latest Changes:
• Automated update to streamline product upgrades
• Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance
• Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs
• Improvements to popup blocking
• Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut
• Answers.com is added to the search engine list
• Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience
• Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
• Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox
• Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer
• New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6
• Many security enhancements