Mozilla today released Firefox 1.5 on its website. My Firefox 1.0.7 (or whatever) couldn’t find an auto-update — I assume Mozilla hasn’t readied the upgrade file yet — So I downloaded the full installer and ran it. It brought in all my settings flawlessly. This isn’t surprising considering that the previous “auto-updates” just downloaded the latest full installer.
Of the three touted features I place the most value on — better back and forward button performance, better pop-up blocking, and arrangeable tabs — I can only say for sure that the tabs are noticeably different. You can rearrange them. This is good. I’ve longed for that feature more than once. Faster back button? I never noticed it crawling before, but it’s certainly pretty good now. And better pop-up management? Every couple days I’d find a site that defeated the previous Firefox’s blocker, but I honestly can’t remember what any of those sites are and if the new Firefox blocks them, I probably won’t notice them anymore anyway.
PS — I uninstalled Google’s Web Accelerator because it seemed to have stopped saving me time. I decided that unnoticeable time savings weren’t worth any RAM hit. So I nuked it.
Additionally — I got an email from Thomas Rice, whose name I didn’t recognize. He’s got a new website called MyLinkVault. He emailed me the link because he read my posts on DP.com about networked bookmark services. I’ve started to use his site, have started a review, and will probably post it on Saturday. I don’t know if he sent me the link with the expectation that I would review it, but I must point out two things that strike me about the fact that he sent me the link:
1. I’m flattered that the guy who owns the site would email me about his new product. (It’s professional-looking.) And
2. I can’t believe there are people out there (besides my RIT friends) who read my site. Yeah, the logs show IPs from all over the world, but who would believe people actually assimilate information they read on DanPremo.com?