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Firefox

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Mozilla Firefox (originally known as Phoenix and later Mozilla Firebird) is a web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of other volunteers.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 (Windows)

With Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation aims to develop a small, fast, simple, and highly-extensible web browser (separate from the larger Mozilla suite). Firefox has become the main focus of Mozilla development along with the Mozilla Thunderbird email client and has replaced the Mozilla suite as the official browser release of the Mozilla Foundation.

The browser has attracted attention as an alternative for Microsoft Internet Explorer, since Internet Explorer has come under fire for insecurity, lack of features, and ease of spyware and malware installation. Firefox lacks the often dangerous ActiveX component, features an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and an extension mechanism for adding to the browser. Additionally, it is not integrated with Microsoft Windows, as many have criticized Internet Explorer for being. Mozilla Firefox is set to take around 10% of the Internet Explorer market share by 2005, which many have heralded as the return of the Browser Wars.

History and development

The Firefox project started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla browser project led by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross. They perceived the Mozilla browser project as overly compromised by the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship, as well as developer-driven feature creep. The pared-down Phoenix browser (as it was then called) was created to combat the perceived software bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed and referred to internally as SeaMonkey), which integrated features such as IRC, mail and news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing in one suite of software. The current lead developer of Firefox is Ben Goodger.

Mozilla Firefox retains the cross-platform nature of the original Mozilla browser, using the XUL user interface language. Use of XUL makes it possible to extend the browser's capabilities through the use of themes (skins) and extensions. However, the development and installation processes of these add-ons raised security concerns and with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla Foundation opened a Mozilla Update website containing "approved" themes and extensions. Use of XUL also sets Firefox apart from other projects based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine, such as Galeon, Epiphany, K-Meleon, and Camino, and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms. The Mozilla Foundation takes pride in Gecko's support for standards.

Firefox is intended to replace for end users the current all-in-one Mozilla application suite (SeaMonkey). Although SeaMonkey was intended by the Mozilla Foundation to be made obsolete and be replaced entirely by Firefox, the Foundation will continue to maintain SeaMonkey, as it is used by many corporate users. However, the developers of SeaMonkey did strip out several features and much of the interface in an attempt to combat software bloat.

On February 5, 2004 the business and IT consulting company AMS categorized Mozilla Firefox (then Firebird) as a "Tier 1" (meaning "Best of Breed") open source product (Keating, 2004). This means that AMS considered that Firebird was widely believed to be virtually risk-free and technically strong.

The name

File:Firefox logo 305x150.png
The Firefox Logo (source)

The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite called "mozilla/browser". When sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name "Phoenix".

The "Phoenix" name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies. The new name—"Firebird"—was met with mixed reaction. In late April the Mozilla Foundation issued a statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as "Mozilla Firebird" in order to avoid confusion with the Firebird database server. However, continuing pressure from the Open Source community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 Mozilla Firebird was renamed "Mozilla Firefox".

They chose the name "Firefox" for its similarity to "Firebird" but also for its uniqueness in the computing industry. To ensure that no further name changes would be necessary, the Mozilla Foundation began the process of registering Firefox as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in December 2003. [1]

Release history

Key:
Old Version Current Version Future Version
Browser Name Version Codename Release date Significant changes
Phoenix 0.1 Pescadero September 23, 2002 First release. Customizable toolbar; quicksearch.
0.2 Santa Cruz October 1, 2002 Sidebar; Extension management.
0.3 Lucia October 14, 2002 Image blocking; Pop-up blocking whitelist; Tabbed browsing
0.4 Oceano October 19, 2002 Themes; Pop-up blocking improvements; Toolbar customization
0.5 Naples December 7, 2002 Multiple homepages; Sidebar and accessibility improvements; History
Firebird 0.6 Glendale May 17, 2003 New Default Theme (Qute); Bookmark and privacy improvements; Smooth scrolling; Automatic image resizing
0.6.1 July 28, 2003 Bugfix release
0.7 Indio October 15, 2003 Automatic scrolling; Password manager; Preferences panel improvements
0.7.1 Three Kings October 26, 2003 Bugfix release (Mac OS X only)
Firefox 0.8 Royal Oak February 9, 2004 Windows installer; Offline working; Bookmarks and download manager improvements; Rebranded with new (current) logo
0.9 One Tree Hill June 15, 2004 New Default Theme (Winstripe); Comprehensive data migration; New extension/theme manager; Reduced download size; New help system; Linux installer; Mail Icon (Windows only)
0.9.1 June 28, 2004 Bugfix release; updated default theme
0.9.2 July 8, 2004 Vulnerability patch (Windows only)
0.9.3 August 4, 2004 Vulnerability patch (All platforms)
0.10
(1.0 PR) 		Greenlane September 14, 2004 ("Preview Release") Bugs with higher complexity/risk, localization impact. Added RSS/Atom feed support, find toolbar, plugin finder.
0.10.1 October 1, 2004 Vulnerability patch (All platforms)
1.0 RC-1 Mission Bay October 27, 2004 First release candidate
1.0 RC-2 Whangamata November 3, 2004 Second release candidate
1.0 Phoenix November 9, 2004 Official Version 1.0 release
Upcoming releases
1.1 Deer Park March 2005 Re-sync with Mozilla Trunk. Ongoing HIG compliance work for Aqua, GNOME etc.

Three Kings, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill, Mission Bay and Greenlane are all suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand; Whangamata is a small seaside town in the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand. The codenames were chosen from these suburb names by Ben Goodger, who grew up in Auckland. The other codenames included in the Firefox roadmap are derived from an actual roadmap of a journey through California to Phoenix, Arizona.[2]

According to Ben Goodger, "Deer Park is not Deer Park, Victoria, but just a symbolic name. I was riding LIRR a few weeks ago and saw the name go by and I thought it sounded nice".

Market adoption

The adoption of Firefox has been rapid, given the previously accepted dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the browser market. According to a September 2004 report in Tom's Hardware Guide [3], analysts Websidestory reported that 5.2 percent of web users were using the Firefox or Netscape browsers as of late September 2004, a rise of 1.7 percent since June, and that Internet Explorer had lost 1.8 percent of market share in the same period, down to 93.7 percent. According to Mozilla's marketing site, more than 3 million people downloaded Firefox 1.0PR in the first 19 days of its release. Since its release on September 14, 2004, over 8 million people total have downloaded 1.0PR. In addition, downloads are still continuing at a rapid rate of approximately 100,000 per day (as of November 8, 2004).

Firefox is now targeting a 10% marketshare by the end of 2005. [4]

Much of Firefox's rapid adoption results from the recent spate of reports of security vulnerabilities in Explorer, as users look for a safer alternative. The count of pro-Firefox security reports and press articles took a notable upswing after the Download.ject attack of June 23, 2004.

This rapid adoption seems to be accelerated by an active marketing campaign dubbed "Spread Firefox" [5]. The campaign encourages its users to add "Get Firefox" links to their website/e-mails. They are given "referrer points" as an incentive. The top 250 referrers are listed on the site [6]. There are also blogs and forums to discuss marketing techniques.

On October 19, 2004, a small announcement went up on the Spread Firefox homepage. It said the group was going to attempt to raise money to publish a full-page advertisement in the New York Times to announce the release of Firefox 1.0. The ad was to be a Declaration of Independence from Internet Explorer, and would include as signatures the names of all the contributers to the campaign. A goal was set to reach 2500 names.

When the ten day fundraising period was over, it was announced that over 10,000 people had contributed, and raised a total of $250,000, about five times as much as had been expected.

Firefox version 1.0 was launched on November 9, 2004, and is available for free from the Firefox homepage. Mozilla Firefox was downloaded over a million times within 24 hours after its 1.0 release, and within one week had achieved over 3.6 million downloads.

See also

References

Firefox
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