Are you a Firefox fan? I am. However, these past few months, I sense a slow down in Firefox popularity and for good reasons. In the beginning, when Mozilla first came out with Firefox, there was so much hype. Internet Explorer (IE) reigned as web browser king with close to 98% of net users using IE. Netscape made a half hearted attempt to steal IE users over to their web browser but with little success.

After Netscape, it seemed as though there was no contender for IE’s title as the most popular web browser. That was the atmosphere Firefox entered in to. Firefox was a no nonsense web browser. The developers over at Mozilla, stripped down Firefox to the bare essentials, no bloatware. In addition to that, Firefox had some novel features which really helped net users to browse the web a whole lot easier. Some features included: tab browsing, a search box built in to the menu bar, a built in download manager, a password manager and the addition of plugins. What did I miss? Oh yeah, I almost forgot extensions! I think few would disagree with me Firefox’s extensions are the number one selling point for the browser.

Mozilla is furiously working on the next Firefox version 2.0. They have already released the first beta of Firefox 2.0 for public testing. The beta adds some new features, such as: integrated anti-phish protection, an in line spellchecker, search suggestions, closed tab icon on every opened tab and other minor add-ons. Despite all these additions, there is nothing spectacular about Firefox version 2.0. It feels as if there is no more innovation, so anticlimactic. I hope I am wrong but only time will tell.