Let me tell you something first, you probably don't want to download this. It is an alpha test of Firefox 2. Alpha may sound cool, but it is prone to crashing, random screw ups, and has very little support right now. This review is a heads up for the improvements Firefox 2 will one day show off.

The complete features added are listed here. However, I'll go over the important ones.

Inline Spell Checking

Firefox will now spellcheck anything you type into a message box, just right-click on the word to get suggestions on how to spell it right (click on the suggestions to correct the word). Mozilla has also made dictionaries for other languages, so no matter what language you speak, you can use the spellcheck.

Automatic Restoration Of Your Browsing Session After A Crash

Available via a Firefox add-on for a long time, this is also included by default in Opera. Now, if Firefox crashes for whatever reason, the next time you start it you get the option to “restore session”, meaning all the pages that you were looking at when it crashed will be reopened.

New Search Plugin Manager

Another extension that got into the default installation. Beforehand, it was difficult to remove search engines from Firefox. Now it comes with an interface similar to the extension and theme managers.

New Add-Ons Manager

Gone are the individual extension and theme managers, they are now consolidated into a single window. While it is a minor change, it helps streamline the browser a bit more.

Sherlock And OpenSearch Engines Support

Allows for better and more comprehensive searches.

In terms of speed, it is slightly slower than Firefox 1.5 (what most Firefox users are using). Since it is an alpha however, don't have any high expectations from it. Alphas are generally not stable, easy to use, or fast. Having said this, Bon Echo 2 is far more streamlined than any other version of Firefox that we have seen. More options compacted into a smaller space, such as the various improvements listed like spellcheck, search engine manager, and session restore makes Firefox 2 look very promising.

Mozilla has launched a site for the Bon Echo tests, where you can find updates, faqs, known problems, and hopefully fixes.

View the complete Firefox 2 Gallery