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Whats New in Firefox 2

Visual Refresh: Firefox 2s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability
without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience.

Built-in phishing protection: Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected
Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page. Phishing Protection is turned
on by default, and works by checking sites against either a local or online list of known
phishing sites. This list is automatically downloaded and regularly updated when the Phishing
Protection feature is enabled.

Enhanced search capabilities: Search term suggestions will now appear as users type in the
integrated search box when using the Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search engines. A new
search engine manager makes it easier to add, remove and re-order search engines, and users
will be alerted when Firefox encounters a website that offers new search engines that the
user may wish to install.

Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new
windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button. Power users who open more tabs than
can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip that
let them scroll back and forth between their tabs. The History menu will keep a list of recently
closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.

Resuming your browsing session: The Session Restore feature restores windows, tabs, text typed
in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session. It will be activated automatically
when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to
resume their previous session after a system crash.

Previewing and subscribing to Web feeds: Users can decide how to handle Web feeds (like this one),
either subscribing to them via a Web service or in a standalone RSS reader, or adding them as
Live Bookmarks. My Yahoo!, Bloglines and Google Reader come pre-loaded as Web service options,
but users can add any Web service that handles RSS feeds.


Downloading and Installing

System Requirements

Before installing, make sure your computer meets the system requirements.

Downloading Firefox 2
Mozilla.org provides Firefox 2 for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages.
You can get the latest version of Firefox 2 here. For builds for other systems and languages
not provided by Mozilla.org, see the Contributed Builds section at the end of this document.

Installing Firefox 2
Please note that installing Firefox 2 will overwrite your existing installation of Firefox.
You wont lose any of your bookmarks or browsing history, but some of your extensions and
other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available.

Removing Firefox 2
You can remove Firefox 2 through the Control Panel in the Start Menu on Windows, by removing
the Firefox application on OS X, or by removing the firefox folder on Linux.

Removing Firefox 2 wont remove your bookmarks, web browsing history, extensions or other
add-ons. This data is stored in your profile folder, which is located in one of the following
locations depending on your operating system:

Windows 2000, XP Documents and Settings\Application DataMozillaFirefox
Windows NT WINNTProfiles\Application DataMozillaFirefox
Windows 98, ME WindowsApplication DataMozillaFirefox
Mac OS X ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox
Linux and Unix systems ~/.mozilla/firefox

Any version of Firefox that you install after removing Firefox 2 will continue to use
the data from this profile folder.

Extensions and Themes
Extensions installed under Firefox 1.5 may be incompatible and/or require updates to work with
Firefox 2. Please report any issues to the maintainer of the extension. When you install
Firefox 2 all of your Extensions and Themes will be disabled until Firefox 2 determines
that either a) they are compatible with the Firefox 2 release or b) there are newer versions
available that are compatible.

Known Issues
This list covers some of the known problems with Firefox 2. Please read this before
reporting any new bugs.

All Systems
Some firewall software may silently block Firefox from running. This often happens
immediately after Firefox has been installed or updated from a previous version.
There are configuration instructions available for most popular firewall programs
to help you ensure that Firefox is allowed to connect to the Internet.
Dictionaries for several locales cant be packaged with the builds, and must be
manually downloaded by right-clicking in a text area and selecting "Add Dictionaries..."
from the shortcut menu. New dictionaries are regularly being added to Mozilla Add-ons,
so if you dont see the particular dictionary you need, check back later.
When trying to print web pages with text areas, if the text area contains a misspelled
word and spell checking is enabled, all the following content of the text area will
not be printed. You can right-click in the text area and uncheck "Spell check this
field" to turn off spell checking temporarily while you print.
Access key definitions provided by web pages can now be triggered using Alt+Shift+key
on Windows, Ctrl+key on Mac OS X, and Ctrl+Shift+key on Unix.
The Session Restore functionality provided in Firefox 2 will restore connections
to services which use session cookies to maintain login state such as GMail. It is
recommended that users with concerns about the privacy implications of this behavior
change the value of browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false.
The option for "Shrink to fit" has been removed in Firefox 2. If you wish to change this
from the value you had set in your previous version of Firefox, change the value of
browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing.
To install Firefox on a multi-user system in a location in which users do not have
write privileges, Firefox must be run at least once by a privileged user. Alternatively,
an empty file must be created in the following directory: /extensions
/talkback@mozilla.org/chrome.manifest
Software Update will not work if Firefox is installed to a location on your disk to
which you do not have write access, since Software Update needs to replace or create
files in this location.
Some financial institutions use port 563 for secure logins, which results in an error
message. If you encounter this error, make sure that network.security.ports.banned.override
includes 563 in the comma-separated list of banned network ports to override.
Windows
When installing as a restricted-access user on a shared machine into a location that you
can write to, there may still be negative side effects (default browser/other keys not
being set correctly). The browser should still function however. When installing as a
restricted access user do not attempt to install over an installation in a restricted-access/shared
location as this may destroy that installation.
Firefox may hang when closing after viewing a PDF file in some older versions of the Adobe
Acrobat Reader plug in. If you experience this, make sure you are using the newest version of
the plug in.
The Windows installer will not work on Windows NT 4.0 without version 5.80 of the Comctl32.dll
library installed. This library can be obtained from Microsoft for free.
Mac OS X
The "Close Other Tabs" action on the shortcut menu of a tab can fail with an error when more
than 20 tabs are open.
Some users have reported problems viewing Macromedia Flash content on Intel Mac computers.
To work around this problem, users can remove or move the PowerPC version of "Flash Player
Enabler.plugin from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins.
After installing a new plug-in, Firefox may continue to display information for the older
version of the plug-in in aboutlugins. If this happens, quit Firefox, delete the "pluginreg.dat"
file from your profile folder, and relaunch Firefox.
Java does not run on Intel Core processors under Rosetta.
There is no Talkback on Intel-based Macs when running natively or under Rosetta. The Apple Crash
report program should launch in the event of application crashes.
Linux and Unix
If Firefox is installed to a location with spaces in the path, it may not be able to set itself
as default browser and may keep prompting at startup. The work around is to install into a path
without spaces.
GNOME integration does not work properly with Fedora Core 3. Users of Fedora Core 3 will need
to download and install linc-1.0.3-3.1.i386.rpm. After installing the RPM, perform the following
command in the directory in which you installed Firefox (you will need write permission):
touch .autoreg

The next time you start Firefox, GNOME integration should be functional.
firefox -remote (mozilla-xremote-client) no longer works on urls containing commas,
and is deprecated. firefox -new-window /url/ will open the url in a new window; firefox -new-tab
/url/ will open the url in a new tab.