Firefox 2 Will Be Released Oct. 24

Not to be outdone by Microsoft's recent release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla will release the second major version of its rival Firefox browser on Tuesday, October 24

Mozilla has also enhanced the popular tabbed browsing feature in 2.0 that Firefox introduced when it emerged two years ago as the first significant rival to IE in years, Beard adds. Tabs allow users to navigate more easily between multiple Web pages when browsing the Internet, and Microsoft added tabs to IE 7 after Firefox's success with the feature.

In Firefox 2.0, Mozilla has added a "close" button on its tabs, as well as new visual features to make the tabs appear more obvious to the user.

New usability features in Firefox 2.0 that differentiate it from IE 7 include one that will restore the browser to pages where the user was working if a sudden OS restart is required. "If your browser needs a restart or the OS asks you to reboot, losing all of those Web pages and content is pretty disruptive,"

Firefox 2.0 is offering two options for enabling this feature. One way is that, by default, the browser will give the user an option to restore his or her browser sessions if there is an unexpected shutdown; the other is an advanced option to set the browser so that it always restores the last five pages visited before a sudden reboot.

Check this link comparative review of IE 7 and Firefox 2.