Bon Echo Alpha 2 : Developers Testing Firefox 2

Bon Echo Alpha 2 is the second developer milestone on the path to Firefox 2 web browser that tests the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 2.

This is useful for firefox developers and testers as it is a Alpha 2 milestone release and is intended for testing purposes only. What it provides for a casual Firefox users, is an insight into upcomming powerful new features in the next Firefox version.

Changes in this milestone that require feedback include:
* Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
* Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
* Inline spell checking in text boxes
* Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
* Search suggestions now appear in the search box auto-complete for Google and Yahoo!
* New search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
* Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
* New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
* New Add-Ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes
* Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
* New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
* Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

If you check out the 50 best firefox extensions, you realize they are attempting to incorporate some of the very useful extension into the core functionality of Firefox.

A new feature they seem to be working on in Bookmarks is Microsummaries – “regularly-updated succinct compilations of the most important information on web pages. They are compact enough to fit in the space available to a bookmark label, provide more useful information about pages than static page titles, and are regularly updated as new information becomes available.”