While the Web is busy discussing Firefox 2 Alpha, Mozilla releases the Bon Echo Alpha 1 milestone. WTF? It's actually the same thing, but we're not calling it Firefox 2 Alpha, as we don't want ordinary users, who are not very familiar with the notion of Alpha quality (or lack of...) to download the binaries and be disappointed by the possible instability and apparent lack of new features. This is the reason why we've been using the "Bon Echo" code name instead of "Firefox 2", and not publicizing it more.

Bon Echo Alpha 1 is meant for developers and testers, not for end users. If you feel like testing it in order to help improving what will become Firefox 2, please download, install and start testing. Otherwise, there is nothing to be seen (yet). The User Interface may change quite a bit between now and the final release. For now, a few changes can be seen (and tested):

  • tabbed browsing behavior;
  • Early version of Places (new bookmarks and history system)
  • new plugin format
  • updates to the extension system in order to improve security and localization;
  • SVG now supports textPath.

More information there: