Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Unleashed

Mozilla has released the first beta of the long-awaited Firefox 1.5, the first major milestone since Firefox 1.0 debuted last November. The new release, code-named Deer Park, brings to the table a number of performance and usability improvements, along with new Web standards support.

Enhancements in Beta 1 include a better software update system to serve browser upgrades, the ability to reorder tabs through drag and drop functionality, and improved pop-up blocking. A new feature quickly clears private data using a menu item or keyboard shortcut.

Back and Forward navigation has also been reworked to more cache pages for instant loading, rather than forcing the browser to re-render them. In addition, better support has been announced for Mac OS X. Early versions of the Firefox browser have proven to be crash-prone on Apple's operating system.

Accessibility is another area of improvement in Firefox 1.5. Support has been added for DHTML accessibility and screen readers such as Windows-Eyes. The browser also has more descriptive error messages and a broken Web site wizard for reporting sites that do not display properly in Firefox.

Beta 2 of Firefox 1.5 is expected October 5, with a release candidate slated for the end of October. A final release of Firefox 1.5 would likely launch sometime in November.

Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.