Hoowah! New versions of Firefox (Preview Release 1.0) and Thunderbird (0.8) have been released by the Mozilla Foundation. This is a happy day.
Firefox Improvements
Live Bookmarks – Integration of RSS feeds in the bookmark folder. Not sure if I’ll use this one, as I really like Sharpreader, my new aggregator, but I could see it being very useful for people who don’t have/want a separate news aggregator.
Improved Find – “The Find toolbar (which shows at the bottom of the browser window) automatically highlights text in the page as you type and has a useful highlight feature.”
Improved Security & Block of Popups – ‘Nuff said
Bookmark Improvements – This has been one of the few weak areas of the program (well until you grab some handy extensions), so I look forward to seeing the changes.
Stronger Security for Password Manager – While I don’t use this feature, it is good to see they are adding more protection for those who do.
Note: I recommend that you make a note, of every extension you have installed for Firefox, as “all of your extensions will be disabled when you move to PR. If you were using 0.9, when you first run PR, Firefox will try and connect to update.mozilla.org to look for newer, compatible versions of your Extensions, and if they are available it will download and install them. If you were using 0.8, you will have to find newer compatible versions yourself.”
Thunderbird Improvements
Global Inbox – Combine all of your POP e-mail accounts into a single inbox.
Easier to Switch to Thunderbird – They have improved the migration of e-mail, addresses and preferences from the major e-mail clients.
RSS Integration – Deja vu… Well, it could be interesting to see how they have implemented it within Thunderbird. It seems like every program created these days wants to act as a news aggregator in addition to its main role.
Improved Privacy/Security – Always a good thing to see.
Note: If you are upgrading Thunderbird, pay attention to their install warning.