Firefox 2.0 features revealed

A new blog post from one of the Firefox developers at Mozilla has finally given us an insight into the new features that will accompany the release of version 2.0 of the browser.

'Ben' says that the goals for the rendering engine in 2.0 are relatively cautious, with an awareness that ambitious plans for the Gecko engine delayed version 1.5. This version will instead concentrate mostly on interface and functionality improvements, rather than significant backend overhauls. Those, it is suggested, will come in version 3.0.

Here's a quick summary of what's going to make it in:

• New bookmarks and history navigation
  
• Better tabbed browsing with more intuitive interface
  
• More flexible web search
  
• Improved RSS handling
  
• Interface facelift
  
• Squashing of easy bugs
  
• Integrated spell-check function

As regular forum readers, we have to say that we're excited about that last one. A spell-check right within the browser, without having to go download an extension? Now there will be no excuse for bad speelong!

Will these new improvements give Firefox the edge it needs to take on Internet Explorer in the next round? IE7 is on the horizon as Vista plans to ship in August, so the Mozilla team have six months to get this out there and get cracking.

A decent list of new features, or a disappointing non-list of should-have-beens? Let us know what you think in the forum.