Mozilla Firefox

Pictures of Mozilla Firefox

Information about Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox has 22.98% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of Aug. 2009 (3 years ago), making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has 66.97%.

To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards in addition to several features which are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.

Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka "geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.

Firefox runs on various versions of Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux (40 walls), and many other Unix-like operating systems. Its current stable release is version 3.5.3, released on sep. 9, 2009 (3 years ago). Firefox's source code is free software, released under a tri-license GNU GPL/GNU LGPL/MPL.

History

developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On Apr. 3, 2003 (9 years ago), the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.

The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project. In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. Continuing pressure from the database server's development community forced another change; on Feb. 9, 2004 (8 years ago), Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox, often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla prefers that Firefox be abbreviated as Fx or fx, though it is often abbreviated as FF. The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released on Nov. 9, 2004 (8 years ago). After a series of stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update, Firefox version 1.5, on Nov. 29, 2005 (7 years ago).

Version 2.0

On Oct. 24, 2006 (6 years ago), Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes updates to the tabbed browsing environment; the extensions manager; the GUI; and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by Google as an extension, and later merged into the program itself. In dec. 2007 (5 years ago), Firefox Live Chat was launched. It allows users to ask volunteers questions through a system powered by Jive Software, with guaranteed hours of operation and the possibility of help after hours.

Version 3.0

Mozilla Firefox 3 was released on Jun. 17, 2008 (4 years ago), by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Mozilla Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. The new version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web APIs. Other new features include a redesigned download manager, a new "Places" system for storing bookmarks and history, and separate themes for different operating systems. The latest version under 3.0 is Firefox 3.0.14.

Development stretches back to the first Firefox 3 beta (under the codename 'Gran Paradiso') which had been released several months earlier on 19 Nov. 2007 (5 years ago), and was followed by several more beta releases in spring 2008 (4 years ago) culminating in the Jun. release. Firefox 3 had more than 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, setting a Guinness World Record.

Version 3.5

Version 3.5, codenamed Shiretoko, adds a variety of new features to Firefox. Initially numbered Firefox 3.1, Mozilla developers decided to change the numbering of the release to 3.5, in order to reflect a significantly greater scope of changes than originally planned. These changes include support for the