The Mozilla Corporation has officially launched its new Firefox 2.0 web browser.

The final-version release of the popular open source browser touts built-in phishing protection and spell-checking for online forms, as well as an option to restore forms and pages after an application crash.

Firefox's RSS handling has also been updated, allowing users to decide whether to send feeds to an RSS reader or use Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature, which shows the latest headlines from a site rather than a specific title.

"The improvements Mozilla has made to the ease of use, performance, and security in Firefox 2 reflect our ongoing, singular focus on meeting the needs of web users all over the world,” said Mozilla chief executive Mitchell Baker.

Originally slated for release in Mid-August, Firefox 2.0 had been delayed to allow for bug fixes. The browser entered its release candidate phase in September and October.

The release of Firefox 2.0 comes five days after Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 7, the first major standalone update to the browser in five years. While Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser on the web, Firefox's market share has climbed to 11.5 per cent worldwide, compared to Internet Explorer's 85.85 per cent, according to web data from the onestat.com analytics service.

Firefox 2.0 is available as a free download for the Windows, Linux and MacOS X operating systems in multiple languages.

Download Firefox 2.0.