Unfortunately, if you're attached to your current set of Firefox extensions, plug-ins that provide Firefox with additional use, you'll need to update almost all of them. Some extensions written for the current Firefox simply do not work within Firefox 1.5, although Mozilla says it's working to tweak these into shape. Also, as Firefox continues to grow as the default alternative to Internet Explorer, look for more coding flaws to be reported. Of the flaws announced so far, Firefox has had far fewer critical flaws than Internet Explorer, and in general, Mozilla has been quick to patch them, while Microsoft has waited up to three months at times.
The first thing we noticed after installing Firefox 1.5 was its speed--even complex pages, with plenty of Flash and Shockwave content, loaded much faster than the first version of Firefox. New caching technology means hitting the Back button will return previously viewed pages almost instantly. Support options for Firefox 1.5 include extensive online documentation and FAQs, a very active online community forum, newsgroups, online chat, and telephone support hosted by a third party, InfoSpan for $39.95 per incident. We found Mozilla's up-front disclosure of options and costs refreshing; Microsoft's support options for Internet Explorer, for example, are not clear, and costs for telephone support are not disclosed until after you've initiated your call.
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