Firefox 2 Review - Liking the Inline Spell Checking!

Firefox 2
Firefox has gained considerable ground in the web browser market. The popularity of this open source browser is growing fast, and among web developers it is almost universally preferred. In part because of tabbed browsing. But also because Firefox's extensions, like the web developer extensions, provide tools like table and div layer outlines, screen rulers, and color identification pickers. Such tools have been available for Firefox for some time. Internet Explorer while getting close to Firefox still has a bit of catching up to do in this regard. And isn't sitting still, version 2 is raising the bar again.

Now most of the upgrades to Firefox 2 aren't things that show up in normal use, but rather make developers really happy. As such I'll only mention one important improvement in Firefox 2 over Internet Explorer. While it's only one feature, in my opinion, it blasts all other features out of the water. What is this amazing feature? Inline spell checking!

Inline Spell Checking - Seriously, inline spell checking is so huge, especially for me who couldn't spell my way out of a paper bag, that I will use Firefox 2 over Internet Explorer 7 every day. One of the great things that's happening on the web is the rise of the web based applications (see our newsletter AJAX: The Next Generation of Web Applications). I've been on a mission to see how much I can get away from desktop applications and rely on web based applications. I've successfully moved to Google's Gmail and Google calendar so I no longer need Outlook. Not only can I know access these critical business tools from any computer, I can even get to them from my phone. Currently I'm moving toward using online word processing and spreadsheets. Right now I'm writing this newsletter in what was Writely but was purchased by Google and is now called Google Docs and Spreadsheets (Writely was a much better name). Problem is I'm a horrible speller. So when writing online or sending Gmail, I no longer have Outlook or Word to cover my embarrassing mistakes. But now, thanks to Firefox 2, I immediately get those wonderful red squigglies under all my typos. This is exactly what I needed to be able to rely on web applications for my day to day work and communication. This feature also improves Newfangled's own content management system since content typed directly into a page's editing screen is also spell checked on the fly.

There are lots of nice features in the new browsers, and since they appear to be in line with most standards and display pages properly, I have to admit that I'm happy about the outcome of competition in the web browser market. And over and above all the improvements in these browsers, I am most psyched (and able to spell "psyched") about spell checking. Inline spell checking, wow, that's what I call a good thing.