New in Firefox 2 beta 1 is a built-in antiphishing control. Like Internet Explorer 7 beta 3, Firefox 2 beta 1 will check a Web site for signs that it is not legitimate. Unlike IE 7, which uses heuristics as well as a blocked list, Firefox 2 currently uses only an internal blocked list.

Firefox 2 goes further than IE 7 by also allowing you to change your antiphishing preference and use, say, Google’s instead.

Like Opera 9, Firefox 2 has the ability to save all of your open tabs, and it offers to restore your last session upon reboot. This feature is handy if you keep a number of tabs open all the time.

Unlike Internet Explorer, Firefox has long had a search box built into its browser. Now you can quickly reorder your search engine preferences and take advantage of that engine’s search suggestion capabilities.

Say you want to find information on Bon Echo; just typing “bon echo” gives you a drop-down menu of suggested choices available on Google, for example.

Want to bookmark a page? You can use either Live Bookmarks within Firefox or specify a third-party RSS reader as the default for all of your RSS subscriptions.

Now any text that you type to multiline text boxes online will be checked for mistakes. However, only dictionary words are checked, and misspellings are identified with a squiggly red line. Grammar, which includes missing words, will not be checked.

With Firefox 2, you can manage both your extensions and your themes (skins) within Firefox in one console. For more details, see CNET Reviews’ Firefox 2 (Bon Echo) beta 1 First Take.