   #copyright

Mozilla Firefox

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Software

   Mozilla Firefox
   Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, displaying the English Wikipedia
   main page
   Developer: Mozilla Foundation / Mozilla Corporation
   Stable release:

   Date: YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601); Update: Do a click!
   Preview release:

   Date: YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601); Update: Do a click!
   OS: Cross-platform
   Available language(s): Multilingual
   Use: Web browser
   License: MPL, MPL/ GPL/ LGPL tri-license
   Website: www.mozilla.com/firefox

   Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source, cross-platform graphical web
   browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of
   volunteers. Started as a fork of the browser component (Navigator) of
   the Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite
   as the Mozilla Foundation's flagship product. Firefox is often
   abbreviated as FF; officially it is Fx.

   Firefox had gained acclaim from numerous media outlets, including
   Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, even before its 1.0 release on
   November 9, 2004. With over 25 million downloads in the 99 days after
   the initial 1.0 release, Firefox became one of the most downloaded free
   and open source applications, especially among home users. Firefox 2
   was released on October 24, 2006 and downloaded over 2 million times
   within 24 hours.

   As of September 2006, Firefox's usage share is around 12% of overall
   browser usage (see market adoption below), with its highest usage in
   Germany (about 39% as of July 2006).

History

   Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an
   experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed that the
   commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and 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
   pared-down browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla
   Suite. On April 3, 2003, The Mozilla Foundation announced that they
   planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and
   Thunderbird.

   The Firefox project has gone through many name changes through its
   history. Originally titled Phoenix, it had to be 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 in order to avoid
   confusion with the database software. However, continuing pressure from
   the database server's development community forced another change, and
   on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox (or
   Firefox for short).

   The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released
   on November 9, 2004. Aside from stability and security fixes, the
   Mozilla Foundation released just one major update to Firefox—version
   1.5, on November 29, 2005—before the debut of Firefox 2.

   On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes
   changes to the tabbed browsing environment; enhancements to the
   extensions manager; enhancements to the GUI (including a more
   glossy-looking default theme); improvements to the find, search and
   software update engines; a greater level of accessibility; session and
   download restore; and new anti-phishing features. Firefox 1.5 users
   will not be automatically updated to Firefox 2, because automatic
   updates are for security and stability releases only. Firefox 1.5 users
   will be notified of the update to Firefox 2 a few weeks after the
   release of Firefox 2.

Future development

   According to the roadmap, future Firefox development will include
   version 3.0. Development on version 3.0, which will be based on Gecko
   1.9, occurs simultaneously on the Mozilla trunk. Newer versions of
   Firefox will use Cairo as the rendering layer instead of GDI+.

Version 3.0

   Mozilla Firefox (codename Minefield), version 3.0a1 (pre-Alpha) running
   on Windows XP
   Enlarge
   Mozilla Firefox (codename Minefield), version 3.0a1 ( pre-Alpha)
   running on Windows XP

   The development name for Mozilla Firefox 3 is Gran Paradiso. The
   precursory releases are currently codenamed "Minefield", as this is the
   name of the trunk builds. "Gran Paradiso", like other Firefox
   development names, is an actual place. " Gran Paradiso" is the name of
   a national park in Italy. When Firefox 3 branches, it will adopt the
   "Gran Paradiso" codename. The release timeframe for Firefox 3 is May
   2007.

   The largest change for Firefox 3 will be the implementation of Gecko
   1.9, an updated layout engine (more correctly big changes to the reflow
   code and migration of nsTextFrame to the Thebes infrastructure).
   Firefox 3 will also include several new features and some that were
   bumped from Firefox 2, such as the overhauled Places system for storing
   bookmarks and history in an SQLite backend. Due to Microsoft's decision
   to end support for Windows 98 and Windows Me on July 11, 2006, and
   because Cairo does not support Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, and
   Windows NT 4.0, Firefox 3 will not run on those operating systems.
   Unlike previous versions, Firefox 3 on Mac OS X will use native Cocoa
   widgets.

   The development team is also asking that Firefox users submit feature
   requests that they wish to be included in Firefox 3.

Version 4.0

   On October 13, 2006, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer,
   wrote about the plans for Mozilla 2.0, the platform on which Firefox 4
   is likely to be based. These changes include improving and removing
   XPCOM APIs, switching to standard C++ features, just-in-time
   compilation with JavaScript 2 (known as the Tamarin project), and
   tool-time and runtime security checks.

Features

   The developers of Firefox aim to produce a browser that "just works"
   for most casual users. User-created extensions and plugins can be
   installed to integrate with Firefox giving a wide range of choice for
   the end-user. The main features included with Firefox are tabbed
   browsing, incremental find, live bookmarking, a customizable download
   manager and a built-in Search toolbar. The user can customize their
   version of Firefox with downloadable extensions, a variety of different
   themes and skins, and many hidden preferences that are easily
   accessible to the advanced user.

   Mozilla Firefox claims support for many software standards, including
   but not restricted to: HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, ECMAScript ( JavaScript),
   DOM, MathML, DTD, XSL, SVG, XPath and PNG images with variable
   transparency. Firefox release builds do not yet pass the Acid2
   standards-compliance test. However, there are developmental versions of
   Firefox that currently pass the Acid2 test, and Firefox 3 is expected
   to pass Acid2.

   Mozilla Firefox is a multi-platform browser, providing support for
   various versions of Microsoft Windows, including 98, 98SE, Me, NT 4.0,
   2000, XP, and Server 2003. It also runs on Mac OS X, and the
   Linux-based operating systems using the X Window System. Although not
   officially released for certain operating systems, the freely available
   source code works for many other operating systems, including but not
   restricted to: FreeBSD , OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently,
   Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

   Firefox also provides an environment in which web developers can use
   built in tools (from extensions). These include a JavaScript Console, a
   DOM Inspector, Venkman JavaScript debugger, and an integrated
   development toolkit called Web Developer .

   The fact that Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known
   unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see
   Comparison of web browsers) is often cited as a reason to switch from
   Internet Explorer to Firefox for improved security. A 2006 Symantec
   study showed that Firefox had surpassed Internet Explorer in the number
   of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through to September,
   though these were patched more quickly than vulnerabilities found in
   other browsers. Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that
   Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities, as counted by
   security researchers.

   Firefox uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using
   strong cryptography. It also supports smartcards for secure login to
   web servers. It uses a sandbox security model and the developers use a
   "bug bounty" scheme, for finding fixes for some security and feature
   additions.

Performance

   Internet Week ran an article in which many readers reported high memory
   usage in Firefox 1.5. Mozilla developers said the higher memory use of
   Firefox 1.5 is sometimes at least partially an effect of the new fast
   backwards and forwards (FastBack) feature. Other known causes of memory
   problems are misbehaving extensions, such as Google Toolbar and Adblock
   or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. However,
   when PC Magazine compared memory usage of Firefox, Opera, and Internet
   Explorer, they found that Firefox seemed to use only about as much
   memory as the other browsers. Tests performed by PC World and Zimbra
   indicate that Firefox 2 uses less memory than Internet Explorer 7.

   Softpedia notes that Firefox takes longer to start up than other
   browsers and browser speed tests confirm this to be the case. IE also
   launches slightly faster than Firefox on Microsoft Windows since many
   of its components are built into Windows and are loaded during system
   startup.

Licensing

   Firefox is an open-source application, tri-licensed under the Mozilla
   Public License (MPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), and the GNU
   Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The licenses permit anyone to
   view the source code, as well as modifying and redistributing it
   (though with trademark restrictions). Netscape and Flock are examples
   of software based on Firefox code.

   In the past, Firefox was licensed solely under the MPL. The Free
   Software Foundation (FSF) criticizes the MPL for being weak copyleft;
   the license permits, in limited ways, proprietary, derivative works.
   Code under the MPL also cannot be legally linked with code under the
   GPL or the LGPL. To address these concerns, Mozilla tri-licensed
   Firefox under the MPL, GPL, and LGPL, which permits developers to use
   whichever license they wish in creating derivative works. The effect of
   the tri-licensing is that developers can legally link Firefox code with
   GPL or LGPL code, but still allows them to create proprietary,
   derivative works (though not both at once).

   The FSF considers the official Firefox binaries released by Mozilla to
   not be free software because they include the proprietary crash
   reporter Talkback, have trademark restrictions on the Firefox name and
   artwork, and force the user to accept a clickwrap agreement (the latter
   only applies to the Windows version). Google and Mozilla developers are
   working on Airbag, an open-source replacement for Talkback, that will
   allow official Firefox builds to be entirely free of proprietary
   software.

   In September 2006, Mozilla requested Debian not to use the official
   Firefox name for its own patched version. Mozilla requires that
   distribution of builds called "Firefox" include the official artwork
   and that any changes made to the Firefox code required approval by
   Mozilla. Since the official artwork is trademarked and copyrighted,
   thus going against the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and since
   Debian didn't want to go through Mozilla to make changes, Debian
   decided to fork Firefox into IceWeasel.

Market adoption

   Usage share of Mozilla Firefox over time
   Enlarge
   Usage share of Mozilla Firefox over time
   A graph of Firefox 1.x and 2.x cumulative downloads in millions
   Enlarge
   A graph of Firefox 1.x and 2.x cumulative downloads in millions

Usage share

          Statistics reference: Usage share of web browsers

   Web-surfers have adopted Firefox rapidly, despite the dominance of
   Internet Explorer in the browser market. Internet Explorer has seen a
   steady decline of its usage share since Firefox's release. According to
   several sources (as listed in statistics reference), by July 2006,
   Firefox had around 12% of global usage share.

   Europe, according to a study released by the firm XiTi on 2006- 06-16,
   generally had higher percentages of Firefox use, with an average of
   20%.

Download count

   Downloads have continued at a steady rate since Firefox 1.0 was
   released in November 2004. No other Mozilla Foundation product has
   experienced such growth.

   CAPTION: Downloads of Firefox 1.x and 2.x since November 9, 2004

         Date        Number of days Downloads (millions)
   November 10, 2004 1              1
   February 16, 2005 99             25
   April 29, 2005    171            50
   July 26, 2005     259            75
   October 19, 2005  344            100
   March 3, 2006     479            150
   July 31, 2006     629            200
   November 11, 2006 732            250

   These numbers do not include downloads using software updates or from
   third-party websites. They do not represent a user count, as one
   download may be installed on many machines, or one person may download
   the software multiple times. Mozilla Vice President of Products
   Christopher Beard estimates that Firefox currently has 70 million to 80
   million users as of October 2006.

Spread Firefox campaigns

   The rapid adoption of Firefox apparently accelerated in part because of
   a series of aggressive marketing campaigns since 2004. For example,
   Blake Ross and Asa Dotzler organized a series of events dubbed
   "marketing week".

   On September 14, 2004, a marketing portal dubbed "Spread Firefox" (SFX)
   debuted along with the Firefox Preview Release, creating a centralized
   space for the discussion of various marketing techniques. The portal
   enhanced the "Get Firefox" button program, giving users "referrer
   points" as an incentive. The site lists the top 250 referrers. From
   time to time, the SFX team or SFX members launch marketing events
   organized at the Spread Firefox website.

World Firefox Day 2006

   The World Firefox Day campaign started on July 15, 2006, which is the
   anniversary of the founding of the Mozilla Foundation, and ran until
   September 15, 2006. Participants registered themselves and a friend on
   the website for nomination to have their names displayed on the Firefox
   Friends Wall, a digital wall that will be displayed at the headquarters
   of the Mozilla Foundation. An e-mail is sent to the nominated friend
   which provides a hyperlink to download Mozilla Firefox. If the friend
   downloads the program from this link the nomination is accepted. The
   names also appear on a website. The link to this website can be found
   by looking in the credits of the current version of Mozilla Firefox,
   Firefox 2. The Firefox Wall of Friends can also be found at the World
   Firefox Day website

Industry adoption

   Since the pre-1.0 stages, several well-known websites and web
   applications, including Gmail, have supported (and in some cases,
   required) the use of Firefox. Since March 30, 2005, the Google search
   engine has utilized the link prefetching feature of Firefox for faster
   searching. Google, Inc. also recommends Firefox as the browser for its
   Blogger.com weblog service. On May 18, 2005, eBay announced support for
   Firefox for its eBay Picture Manager. In 2006, Microsoft released a
   Firefox-compatible Windows Genuine Advantage browser plug-in.

   Search engine companies including Google, Yahoo! and A9.com now also
   offer Firefox extensions for accessing their services, in addition to
   their original Internet Explorer add-ons. Google has released four
   Extensions for Firefox, further affirming the company's interest in
   Firefox.

   In December 2005, the Inquirer reported that Dell UK would start
   shipping the Firefox browser pre-installed on their PCs, but neither
   Dell nor Mozilla have confirmed this.

Institutional adoption

   During the FOSDEM 2005 conference, Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla
   Europe, noted that Firefox has had more success in the consumer market
   than with institutions. He also theorized that pressure from Microsoft
   caused institutions who had adopted Firefox to remain silent about it.


   Mozilla Firefox

    I know companies that are deploying Firefox or Thunderbird, but they
   aren't talking about it as they don't want to see an increase in their
                      [Microsoft] Office licence price.


   Mozilla Firefox

   Some observers, such as Serdar Yegulalp of TechTarget and Jim Rapooza
   of eWEEK note that Firefox does not provide tools that make
   institutional deployment easier, such as a client customization kit
   (which Mozilla has since released) or Microsoft Installer (MSI)
   packages. Furthermore, they note that Firefox does not support some
   technologies that are sometimes used in institutional environments,
   such as ActiveX and Active Directory.

   While institutions may not be actively deploying Firefox in large
   numbers, more and more are allowing their employees to install Firefox,
   according to JupiterResearch. They found that in 2006, 44% of companies
   with more than 200 employees allowed Firefox on their employees'
   systems, compared with 26% in 2005.

Other versions, builds, and forks

                  Firefox
                   About
     * Mozilla Firefox

        Community and Customization
     * Spread Firefox
     * Extensions ( Main category)

       Custom Distributions and Forks
     * Flock
     * IceWeasel
     * Madfox
     * Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition
     * Netscape
     * Swiftfox
     * Torpark

Portable versions

   Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition (also known as Firefox Portable) is
   a repackaged version of Firefox designed to run from a USB flash drive,
   iPod, external hard drive, or other portable media. The newest version
   can be run live from a CD. It arose out of a mozillaZine thread in June
   2004. John T. Haller released the first packaged version and has led
   its further development. It includes a specialized launcher that
   adjusts extensions and themes to work as it is moved between different
   computers. There is also a portable version of Firefox available for
   Macintosh computers called Portable Firefox OS X.

   Here is a full list of Firefox in portable app form:
     * Firefox Portable for Microsoft Windows and Wine on Linux/Unix
     * Portable Firefox OS X for Mac OS X
     * Cross-platform Portable Firefox for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows
     * Firefox for U3 smart drives
     * X-Firefox as part of WinPenPack (in Italian only)
     * Torpark (Portable Firefox with Tor built in)

Response from competition

   Despite Firefox's apparent gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft's head
   of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, stated that he did not see
   Firefox as a threat and that there was not significant demand for the
   featureset of Firefox among Microsoft's users. Vamos stated that he
   himself had never used it. Former Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has
   used Firefox, but he has commented "so much software gets downloaded
   all the time, but do people actually use it?"

   However, a Microsoft SEC filing on June 30, 2005 acknowledged that
   browsers such as Mozilla are competitive threats to Internet Explorer:
   "Competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the
   Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating
   system products."

   In August 2006, Microsoft made an offer to Mozilla to help integrate
   Firefox with the forthcoming Windows Vista, which Mozilla accepted.
   Upon the release of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team
   shipped a cake to Mozilla as a sign of appreciation.

Gallery

   Firefox 1.5 in Microsoft Windows XP

   Firefox 2 in Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre

   Firefox 2 running under GNOME on Ubuntu

   Firefox 2 running in Apple Mac OS X v10.4.8

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
