Firefox 2.0 & The Linux Backspace Key

Firefox 2.0 was released on Tuesday and if you haven't already downloaded it, I highly recommend you do. There are several new features which I believe make it worth the upgrade:

  • A huge speed increase, in both starting the browser and loading web pages
  • A very large number of bug fixes over previous versions of Firefox
  • Built-in spell checker, which automatically checks the spelling of words you type inside text boxes, including web based email clients
  • Session-save feature, which allows you launch your browser and have it load all the web pages you were previously viewing

A number of the features which have been included with Firefox 2, such as the spell checker and session saver, were previously available as extensions for Firefox -- those two in particular were my favorite extensions and I'm happy to see them finally built-in.

The disadvantage to upgrading right now is the small number of extensions that have been updated to work with Firefox 2. About 80% of my extensions no longer work after upgrading, however the ones that are most important to me -- the session saver and spell checker -- are already built-in. If there are some extensions you are currently using that you absolutely cannot live without, then make sure they support Firefox 2 before you upgrade!

For those Linux users who have upgraded to Firefox 2, you may have noticed that your backspace key no longer works as a back button to go back one page. The Firefox developers decided to change the backspace action to scroll up one page instead of back one page, as explained here:

The backspace key was mapped to the browser “Back” function in Mozilla for consistency with Internet Explorer. However, to improve consistency with other applications running on Linux, it was decided that this mapping should be optional—and set based on which platform the browser was running on. As a compromise, this preference was created to allow the backspace key to either go back/forward, scroll up/down a page, or do nothing.

You can easily change the backspace action by using about:config (in your address bar) and then changing browser.backspace_action to 0 instead of 1. Restart Firefox, and backspace will have the same action as it did in previous versions.

There are lots of little bells and whistles in Firefox 2 and I'm still discovering them every day. Today for example, while I had about 15 tabs open, I noticed a little arrow on the right edge of Firefox next to all the tabs. Clicking that arrow brings down a list of all the tabs, with each of their titles fully visible. That is an extremely useful feature if you regularly have several tabs open (as I usually have 20+ tabs open at a time).

Great work on Firefox 2 Mozilla and Firefox developers! Don't worry, I won't send you a poisoned cake like Microsoft. 😉

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