Bon Echo Alpha 3 is the third developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 2. Mozilla does not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Bon Echo Alpha 3 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.
New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:
• Built in Anti-Phishing protection.
• Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google and Yahoo!
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage.
And please continue to test out these other features which are new from previous Bon Echo releases:
• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
• Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
• New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
The Bon Echo start page has also been changed to make it easier for testers to provide feedback and report bugs.
Builds available for testing include Mac OS X Universal Binary (17 MB), Linux (8.8 MB), and Windows (5.3 MB).
According to Mozilla’s Firefox 2 Schedule, Firefox 2 Beta 1 is due June 2006 and Firefox 2 final release in August 2006.
More info and download links here.
Is it just me, or does it seem like Mozilla’s playing catch-up in terms of a few features mentioned here?
Thanks reminding all of the developers and testers that this is available, MDN. In case they missed the announcement on Friday.
Dude…I know I didn’t find out about this on Friday. Some people only check a few news sites a day for lack of time. It was nice of MDN to choose to announce it at all. Lighten up!
Even though I’m not a developer/tester I do enjoy knowing what’s up in the development world for such important programs as Firefox. It’s for people who just want to know what’s up that MDN posts such things. Obviously, the developers/testers probably knew about this already, but for those of us who aren’t, we would’ve otherwise never known.
Hey Nick: Sounds as if a little more fiber in your diet wouldn’t hurt you.
Loosen up man! No need to dump on MDN!
MW: “include”
As in more in your diet!
Great, a buttload of features that I don’t need. Firefox is going for bloat? It’s an excellent browser, but why the need for themes, the client persistence. Whatever happened to JUST browsing the net??? Sheesh
Damn Mozilla guys. A ton of my bookmarks are stuck in the SQLite format they had in Deerpark Alpha…..
And I can’t get them to export. Damn it.
Chris D: Firefox has always had themes, this release simply improves the dialog box that allows you to install them. Hardly “bloat”.
Chris D. Themes are great. Fire Fox default look is butt ugly. I go for the Apple look on my Fire Fox OS X and my Microcrap XP version.
Eric: you should never expect guaranteed functionality from an Alpha release. They are meant for very early-level testing only.