For the
download-obsessed, unquenchable binary junky, there may be nothing more tantalizing than the avant gard, freshly
squeezed, and oozing-with-promise alpha version. Two steps from actual stable release and
fresh from the programmer's build tool, alpha versions of software tend to be like Swiss cheese--very, very delicious
but with a few holes. Such is the case with the alpha version of Firefox 2.0, the latest iteration of the venerable open source web browser, which was uploaded today for Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can grab it from the official Firefox repository, if you think you can swallow an alpha version. Of course, if you're just curious about trying Firefox and you'd prefer a stable release, the current release version is 1.5. You can get that from the official Firefox site.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-19-2006 @ 10:35PM
Chris Dolan said...
You jumped the gun. According to Asa Dotzler, the QA leader for the Mozilla corp, the alpha is not yet ready (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2006/03/releases_1.html).
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3-20-2006 @ 12:06AM
Tom said...
Well, it may not be 'ready', but whatever it is that I just downloaded, it's FAST (the Windows version, haven't tried the Mac build yet). Of course, I've only had it running for about 10 minutes, I'm sure there are lots and lots of bugs to be found, but it seems stable enough to me at the moment to be a viable alpha release.
If you notice the download location for this build, it's buried pretty deep in Mozilla's FTP server, so it probably isn't meant for public consumption yet. So if it destroys my computer, don't worry Mozilla, I won't come crying to you, it's my own fault.
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3-20-2006 @ 12:44AM
William said...
i've been running this since saturday and its unbelievable how much faster this is than any other browser i've ever used. cant wait for the final version!
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3-20-2006 @ 1:06AM
Geoff said...
I dunno... Flock seems to render pages faster on my machine than FF2. Maybe the final version will make me switch back to FireFox.
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3-20-2006 @ 3:33AM
Papuass said...
Comment 2: Author has really jumped the gun. Mozilla buils new releases every night, called nigtly builds. This is another one, just very close to two point zero alpha hence the name, user agent, version strings are already changed.
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3-20-2006 @ 5:37PM
Liski said...
I'm having trouble removing the Alpha - it keeps giving me errors!
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3-21-2006 @ 1:17AM
Warrick said...
I installed it for 12 minute, saw that none of my extensions worked, tried to uninstall it; that didn't work, tried to manually uninstall it, that deleted the REAL Firefox, then downloaded the old version, installed it, none of the extensions were there, downloaded them etc etc. About an hour for nil net gain!
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