Mozilla To Unveil Firefox 2.0 Today

With last week's release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla refuses to let Microsoft take centre stage for long. The company recently announced that it will be rolling out Firefox 2.0, the newest version of the popular web browser. The scheduled date for the release is set for Tuesday, October 24th.

Mozilla's Vice President of Products, Christopher Beard, has said that Firefox 2.0 will be available for download free of charge from the company's website, mozilla.org. (Source: pcworld.com)

Firefox 2.0 promises improved features and functionality, and asserts its superiority not only over its previous version but also over its rival, Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Firefox 2.0's main advantage over IE7 is its capability to restore browser pages in the case of an unanticipated restart of the operating system. (Source: infoworld.com)

The new Firefox 2.0 browser also includes an anti-phishing tool, a spell-checker, tightly-integrated search functions, an enhanced tab browsing system, and RSS and XML feed readers. (Source: theregister.co.uk)

Even with the aforementioned improvements, Mozilla has ensured to maintain the simplicity that made the first version of Firefox so user-friendly. Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's Vice President of Engineering, said that both the functionality and design of the new version will preserve Firefox's uncluttered and straightforward characteristics. (Source: seattlepi.com)

Firefox currently maintains a respectable 9.8% share of the market, which has grown considerably since 2004 when the company retained a mere 2.9%. Despite its strong second-place foothold, Firefox still lags considerably behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which currently maintains an 85.9% market share. (Source: slashdot.org)

Although Mozilla's release comes with hopes of increasing Firefox's customer base, Mozilla cannot avoid the importance of timing. Since Firefox 2.0 will be released just days after IE7's unveiling, neither company will have a strong advantage over the other on the basis of newness. The competition between the two new versions will likely boil down to features and functionality. If Firefox 2.0 is able to usurp IE7 on these aspects, it may be able to pilfer a few more customers away from Microsoft.

Let the battle begin!