I just upgraded to version 2. First thing I did was to disable the built-in Google spyware, and after changing a few more settings to saner values than the defaults, most of it now behaves as I want it. However, when I enter text into a form (like for example to post this), there seems to be some kind of spell checker active which marks words it doesn't know (e.g. 'spyware'). This is highly annoying, any idea how to disable this 'feature' (bug)?

Look in the Options/Preferences under Advanced -> General tab -> Browsing.

Could you elaborate on the spyware? Are you referring to the search bar?

I must have been blind, thanks!

No, I can just ignore that easily. I meant the 'anti phishing' or whatever they call it these days. I seriously have better things to do than send every URL I visit to Google...

Oh, right. I don't think that is the default behaviour though. I hadn't even tried turning on the "ask Google" setting. Funny how it pops up a terms of service dialog, it's almost as if you were registering with some shady porn site. The good thing is that might just scare a few people away from using this 'service'.

Hopefully, indeed. I'm seriously wondering how Google manages to keep a positive image in spite of all the more-than-questionable things they do with the data they're collecting. They're always openly admitting to store, sell and do whatever else they want with your data, and yet everybody seems to use their services ('GMail') and tools ('Google Earth', 'Google Talk').

Anyway, on topic, I have another problem: I don't like how every tab has its own 'close' button, and I want the old way (one button on the right) back. Any way to do this?

Probably through extensions. I know at least this one should do the trick, and there are probably many others.

Hm, I already have that one installed, but that part of the settings menu only shows an XML error

This one maybe?

Edit: Turns out you don't even need to download it, I should probably have read the entire page before posting.

Ah, that settings did the trick, thanks a lot! I'm wondering why they're hiding so many useful settings. It's not just this one, I also couldn't find the option to accept cookies only if they come from the same server as the site. It used to be there, and I can still choose it via the Webdeveloper extension, but it has disappeared from the main menu...

Even though Firefox is mostly marketed towards the Windows crowd the developers seem to be going along with the current Gnome trend of (over-) simplification. I'm a proponent of clean and simple UI design, but it does get irritating at times that decisions are made for / hidden from you. It's a delicate balance and I guess sometimes (such as in this case) questionable choices are made.

Oh well, I've already replaced it with Seamonkey on my laptop, and seeing all this, I'm considering it for the desktop, too. Not that I need the mail client and other parts, but at least it's not as dumbed down. And as I just noticed, the components can be installed individually, too, so I can just only install the browser part alone...

Firefox used to be good, but with the way they keep removing more and more options with each new version.... What really sucks is that you can't even get most of them back with extensions anymore. There used to be one called "things they left out", but it's website is kaput. You can still achieve most of the things by editing the prefs.js file manually (or through about:config), but you have to know the exact name of the settings, possible values, etc. I had to download v2 to put on this comp, and I don't like it. I realize that they're trying to make it more accessible to all the people who are too mindless to use anything beyond the piece of crap that comes installed on their comp, but they could easily cover both bases by simply putting the basic options in one spot and the more advanced ones in a seperate spot (instead of removing them entirely). Thus, the n00bs wouldn't be scared off by all the settings, yet the rest of us could still have all our options available.

I currently have ie7, opera 9, current (as of xmas) seamonkey, and current (as of xmas) firefox, and k-meleon 1.02 installed. K-meleon is my default browser, the rest are just there as alternates.

Well, at least they managed to put 'Preferences' back into the 'Edit' menu in this version, so not everything is bad

Umm... WTF are you talking about??? There's no prefs option under edit, just tools->options.

Preferences is under Edit in Linux... It's just some GTK+ 2 convention, most apps have the settings there.

Whatever the reason might be these days, it's the way it's always been in Netscape, so this is how it should be

Netscape, mozilla, and seamonkey have it under edit->prefs, but firefox (windows version, at any rate) has had, and still has tools->options instead.

Which is totally nonsensical. How are preferences / options a 'tool'?

It's most likely because explorer has tools->internet options, and the firefox programmers are targetting explorer users.