The new version of Mozilla Firefox is out–grab a beta copy now! There have been doubts if Firefox can keep making inroads against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, given the fact that IE 7 is now out in beta and has many of the features that the internet community has come to expect from a “modern browser” (tabbed browser, feed integration, etc.). However, it appears as if the Mozilla team is going strong with the latest preview of Firefox and will beat Microsoft to the market in the latest round of the browser wars.

New Firefox Features:

• Search engines - the simplistic search tool has been given an update, especially with the ability to natively remove engines from Firefox.
• Tabbed browsing - a tab-close button now rests on each tab, making the closure of tabs more intuitive. The tabs are now able to me moved around, without an extension.
• Spell Checking - form boxes are now checked by Firefox. A nice tool for anyone using form boxes for blogging software.
• Options Menu - the ever evolving option menu gets a face lift again, this time with some new features.
• Feed Integration - Live Bookmarks are taken a step forward–Firefox can now put a feed into your RSS program and various RSS web readers. Also, once a feed is clicked, a nicely formatted page is displayed instead of the raw XML.
• Anti-Phishing Tools - Firefox checks the page against Google or a precompiled database to help users know if the website is authentic.

The only issue I ran into during nearly a week of testing is that my current antivirus program (AntiVir Guard) identified Firefox’s anti-phishing tool as spyware. This identification occurred repeatedly, even after chosing to ignore, delete, or quarantine. Firefox did not suffer when losing this file, however, it is expected that the anti-phishing tool will not work as accurately, if at all. Mozilla’s forums indicated that this was a known issue, so hopefully AVG will adjust their rules accordingly before Firefox is released in late October.

There has been a lot of buzz this week in the anti-DRM (Digital Rights Management) camp. Engadget posted that Microsoft’s PlayForSure had been removed by a program called FairUse4WM. While Microsoft almost immediately pushed a patch out that broke version 1.1 of this program, within the week version 1.2 was released, which according to its author should be much harder for Microsoft to break. Meanwhile, in the iTunes arena, a new version of QTFairUse6 has been released which removes the Apple’s previously uncrackable DRM, FairPlay for iTunes v6.

It will be interesting in the next few weeks to see how this arms race turns out. Will Apple and Microsoft create new DRM models or just try to tweak a few settings to break the current anti-DRM programs, as Microsoft did this past week? Microsoft, and the sites that use its PlayForSure technology (Napster, Ruckus, etc.), seem to be in a much more dire situation, since they utilize a business model that allows users to download an unlimited number of files. So users of Napsters and such services will likely be able to download mass numbers of files and strip all DRM from those files. Apple has less to use because their pay per download model means that users of iTunes will still have to pay for every track that they remove FairPlay from.

Should Microsoft and Apple force the RIAA to accept DRM free downloads? With a business model such as Napster, DRM is somewhat more of a necessity, since having DRM free downloads would be nothing more than a legitimized Limewire or Kazaa. But with a model such as iTunes, wouldn’t making the consumer happy by allowing that 99 cent track to play on any system with an MP3 codec be better? While its legitimacy is in question, allofmp3.com, has made many people very happy by allowing downloads of DRM free tracks.

Engadget has an interesting plea to Microsoft.