You certainly already know but Firefox 1.5 is out. Has lots of fixes and enhancements. For those that do support like me there are some notable changes including a redesign of the preferences. Here’s a small list of things that caught my attention. You can see a large list over at burningedge.

  • Automatic Updates - Firefox will now automatically download security updates and extension updates. Extensions were previously easily updated but this makes everything that way. Not sure if there will still be required separate downloads for larger version bumps.
  • Clear Private Data - You can no set Firefox to clear private data on exit or by command. This allows you to clear history, downloads, cache, cookies, authentication data, saved forms/passwords. It also lets you customize which stuff it clears which was a good decision. We get quite a few calls that end up being fixed by clearing cache/cookies so I foresee this being a helpful addition.
  • Blocked Flash Popups - many sites got around the old pop-up blocker by using Flash. This is supposedly fixed now
  • Error pages instead of popups - I'm not a fan of dialogues because of the user interaction it requires.
  • Find Toolbar - Now auto-closes if you hit enter along with some accessibility updates
  • SVG support - will be great once all browsers support it.
  • API for proxy and stylesheets - extensions now have the ability to set proxies for specific connections or alter user stylesheets. I foresee this being used in some Library toolbars.
  • Cached history - Back and forward now use cache. I believe this should help people that get errors and then have to hit back to get to a form. I believe it should now have the information you entered instead of a clean form. My testing of earlier betas were hit or mix though.

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