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The Mozilla Firefox web browser has begun moving upward again in global market share, and those users can now try out version 2.0 Beta 1 of the browser.

Internet Explorer still dominates the web browsing landscape globally. But it has seen a small decline since May of 2006. Web analytics firm OneStat.com reported that while IE moved down 2.12 percent, Firefox usage increased 1.14 percent.

Overall, OneStat.com noted that on the web, the most popular browser has been Internet Explorer, with 83.05 percent usage as of July 2006. Firefox followed that with 12.93 percent.

"It seems that the global usage share of Mozilla Firefox starts to grow rapidly again after a period of no growth" said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.

Usage in the United States shows a smaller gap between IE and Firefox. Internet Explorer's percentage is only 79.78 percent in the US, while Firefox occupied 15.82 percent of the surfing done online in July.

Meanwhile, Firefox fans will find that the much-discussed Bon Echo beta candidate, aka Firefox 2.0 beta 1, has been made available. Ars Technica noted the latest beta candidate is available via FTP for the following platforms:

Windows
Mac OS X universal binary
Linux

One feature noted in the article may help improve the quality of blogging by Firefox users. The 2.0 beta candidate includes a spell checker for web-based forms. The checker automatically indicates misspelled words as one types; a dotted red line appears under the offending word.

Blog posts without scores of spelling errors? Now that would be a real achievement by Firefox.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.