| Firefox |
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Information AboutFirefox |
Mozilla Firefox is a Free , Open Source , Cross-platform , Graphical Web Browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of volunteers. The browser began as a Fork of the Navigator component of the Mozilla Application Suite ; Firefox has since become the foundation's main development focus (along with its Thunderbird Mail and News Client ), and has replaced the Mozilla Suite as their official main software release. Before its 1.0 release, Firefox had already gained acclaim from numerous media outlets, including '' Forbes '' and the '' Wall Street Journal ''. 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 Application s, especially among Home users. On October 19 2005 , Firefox had its 100 millionth download, just 344 days after the release of version 1.0. Firefox 1.5 was released on November 29 2005 , with more than 2 million downloads within the first 36 hours. Firefox includes an integrated Pop-up blocker, Tabbed Browsing , Live Bookmarks , support for Open Standard s, and an Extension mechanism for adding functionality. Although other browsers have introduced these features, Firefox became the first such browser to achieve wide adoption. Firefox has attracted attention as an alternative to other browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer . As Of January 2006 , estimates suggest that Firefox's Usage Share is around 10% of overall browser usage (see Market Adoption below), with its highest usage in Finland (nearly 40% as of January 2006). On March 21 2006 , Mozilla released the first alpha version of Firefox 2.0 under the name of Bon Echo Alpha 1, with all Firefox branding, including icons, removed to discourage end-users from downloading it. 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. Mozilla Firefox retains the Cross-platform nature of the original Mozilla browser by using the XUL User Interface Markup Language . Through Firefox's support of XUL, users may extend their browser's capabilities by applying Theme s and Extension s. Initially, these add-ons raised security concerns, so with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla Foundation opened Mozilla Update , a website containing themes and extensions "approved" as not harmful. The Mozilla Foundation intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and to replace it with Firefox. On continue to include the product. The Mozilla community (as opposed to the Foundation) continues to release new versions of the suite using the product name SeaMonkey to avoid any possible confusion with the original Mozilla Suite. Naming The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite called ''m/b'' (or ''mozilla/browser''). When sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name ''Phoenix''. The ''Phoenix'' name survived until April 14 2003 , when it changed due to Trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, ''Firebird'', provoked mixed reactions, particularly since the Free database software Firebird uses the same name. In late April, following an apparent name change to ''Firebird browser'' for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name ''Mozilla Firebird'' in order to avoid confusion with the Firebird Database Server . However, continuing pressure from the FLOSS community forced another change, and on February 9 2004 , Mozilla Firebird became ''Mozilla Firefox'' (or ''Firefox'' for short). The Mozilla Foundation chose the name " Firefox " for its similarity to "Firebird", but also for its uniqueness in the Computing Industry . To avoid any potential further name changes, the Mozilla Foundation began the process of registering ''Firefox'' as a Trademark with the United States Patent And Trademark Office in December 2003. As "Firefox" already existed as a registered trademark in the United Kingdom , the Mozilla Foundation licensed the name from the trademark's owner. Branding and visual identity The adoption of a new Visual Identity marks one of Firefox's most visible enhancements from its previous versions. Some people have noted that Free Software frequently suffers from poor icon and User Interface design and from a lack of a strong visual identity. Such opinion held that the early releases of Firefox sported "reasonable" visual designs, but did not regard them as of a standard equivalent to many "professionally" released software packages. The release of Firefox 0.8 in February 2004 saw the introduction of new branding efforts, including new icons. Jon Hicks designed the icon for Firefox 0.8 and up. The logo depicts a stylized Fox , since the Red Panda (to which the term "Firefox" originally referred ) did not "conjure up the right imagery" for Hicks. The specific logo won selection because it makes an impression, while still not "shouting" with overdone artwork. The Firefox icon functions as a Trademark used to designate the official Mozilla build of the Firefox software. Although Firefox uses open source core software, free licensing does not extend to the artwork. For this reason, software distributors who distribute patched or modified versions of Firefox cannot use the Firefox icon. Release history Firefox has developed considerably since its first release as Phoenix on September 23 2002 . Pre-1.0 releases suffered many issues with extensions, as the code for handling them changed from version to version. Throughout its development, Firefox versions have had internal codenames. These have a basis in real locations, with codenames such as '' Three Kings '', '' Royal Oak '', '' One Tree Hill '', '' Mission Bay '', and '' Greenlane '' all referencing suburbs in Auckland , New Zealand , and the name '' Whangamata '' coming from a small seaside town on the Coromandel Peninsula , southeast of Auckland in New Zealand. Ben Goodger , the lead developer of Firefox, who grew up in Auckland, chose these codenames. The other codenames included in the Firefox roadmap derive from an actual roadmap of a journey through California to Phoenix , Arizona , United States. Several builds codenamed "Deer Park" were released in 2005. According to 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." Therefore, this name probably references Deer Park, New York , a CDP on Long Island , United States. "Deer Park" was originally destined to become Firefox 1.1. However, Mozilla Foundation decided to change the version number of the next major release from "1.1" to "1.5", since it contained more new features than originally planned. In an attempt to dissuade end-users from downloading the preview versions, "Deer Park" versions do not use the standard Mozilla Firefox branding. As of the release of Firefox 1.5.0.2 on version of Firefox, though it is still in alpha and is quite buggy. On November 29 2005 , Firefox 1.5 was officially released. Some of the changes:
Future development According to the roadmap, future Firefox development will include version 2.0 and version 3.0. Development for version 2.0 will occur on the Gecko 1.8 branch from which version 1.5 was released, with release coming off of the yet-to-be-created Gecko 1.8.1 branch, while development on version 3.0, which will be based on Gecko 1.9, occurs simultaneously on the Mozilla trunk. Mozilla is developing versions 2.0 and 3.0 simultaneously in order to ship front-end innovation in version 2.0 built on a more stable back-end, while completing major architectural and user interface changes for version 3.0. Goals for Firefox include:
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and future releases of Camino will also include the Java Embedding plugin, which allow Mac OS X users to run Java applets with the latest 1.4 and 5.0 versions of Java (the default Java software shipped by Apple is not compatible with any browser, except its own Safari). Version 2.0 The development name for Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is Bon Echo. The alpha (2.0a1) version became available on March 21 , 2006 , and, according to Mozilla, is aimed primarily at the developer and testing community. There are still some bugs present and it is not feature-complete, so any downloads of Bon Echo should be taken with a grain of salt. Among the additions to the Bon Echo Alpha browser according to Mozilla are:
"Bon Echo", like other Firefox development names, is the name of a public park: Bon Echo Provincial Park . The name translates to "Good Echo ". FEATURES The developers of Firefox aim to produce a browser that "just works" for most casual users. Those interested can add (as Extensions and plugins) many features not packaged with Firefox. Usability and accessibility .]] Developers put in a large amount of work towards simplifying Firefox's user interface. As a result, the interface appears less cluttered than that of many other Internet Suite s. The design of Firefox's option panels leaves many of the infrequently used options found in the Mozilla Suite not visible in Firefox. Firefox supports tabbed browsing, which allows users to open multiple web pages in the same browser window. This feature originated in the Mozilla Suite, which in turn had borrowed the feature from the popular MultiZilla extension for Mozilla. Firefox also belongs in the group of browsers which were first to adopt customizable pop-up blocking. It also supports various forms of keyboard navigation such as Tabbing Navigation and Caret Navigation (and in some builds, Spatial Navigation ). Firefox 1.5 (Windows version) is also the first browser to meet US Federal Government requirements that software be easily accessible to users with physical impairments. The browser has a number of features which help users find information. First, Firefox has an Incremental Find feature known as "find as you type". With this feature enabled, a user can simply begin typing a word while viewing a web page, and Firefox automatically searches for it and highlights the first instance found. As the user types more of the word, Firefox refines its search. Also, if the user's exact query does not appear anywhere on the page, the "Find" box turns red. Firefox also sports a built-in search toolbar with an extensible search engine listing. By default, Firefox allows users to search or remove any unwanted ones . Additionally, Firefox supports the "custom keyword" feature introduced by the Mozilla Suite. This feature allows users to access their Bookmark s from the location bar using keywords (and an optional query parameter). For example, using a custom keyword, a user can type "google apple" into the address bar and be redirected to the results of a Google search for "apple". Custom keywords are provided "out of the box" for Google Search , Google Stock Search, Dictionary.com , Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia . When a user enters a keyword into the address bar that is not recognized by Firefox (for example, simply typing "apple"), it automatically redirects the user to the first result yielded by a Google search for the word (or words). Customizability The design of Firefox aims at high Extensibility . Through Extensions (installed via XPInstall modules), users may activate new features, such as Mouse Gesture s, advertisement blocking, Proxy Server switching, and Debugging tools. Many features formerly part of the Mozilla Suite, such as the ChatZilla IRC Client and a calendar, have become Firefox extensions. One can view the extension system as a ground for experimentation, where one can test new functionalities. Occasionally, an extension becomes part of the official product (for example tabbed browsing, a feature which proved popular through the MultiZilla extension, eventually became part of standard Mozilla). Firefox also supports a variety of themes/skins, which change its appearance. Themes consist of packages of CSS and image files. The Mozilla Update web site offers many themes for downloading. Beyond adding a new theme, users can customize Firefox's interface by moving and manipulating its various buttons, fields, and menus, and likewise by adding and deleting entire toolbars. A Firefox installation can keep all extensions and themes available on the Mozilla Update site up-to-date through Firefox's interface, which periodically checks for updates to installed themes and extensions. Additionally, Firefox stores many hidden preferences that users can access by typing config in the address bar. This mechanism enables features such as single-window mode and error pages, or speeding up page rendering by various tweaks. Experimental features like HTTP Pipelining often lurk hidden in the about:config menu. Support for software standards The Mozilla Foundation takes pride in Firefox's compliance with existing standards, especially W3C web standards. Firefox has extensive support for most basic standards including HTML , XML , XHTML , CSS , ECMAScript ( JavaScript ), DOM , MathML , DTD , XSL and XPath . As of March 2006, however, no Firefox release has succeeded in passing the rigorous Acid2 standards-compliance test, which has been passed so far only by the browsers Safari , Konqueror , Opera (9.0), and ICab , as well as the program Prince . Firefox also supports PNG images and variable transparency. Mozilla contributors constantly improve Firefox's support for existing standards. Firefox has already implemented most of CSS Level 2 and some of the not-yet-completed CSS Level 3 standard. Also, work continues on implementing standards currently missing such as APNG and XForms and improving support for SVG . Some of the Mozilla standards like XBL are also making their way to open standards (via WHATWG ). Cross-platform support Mozilla Firefox runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems:
Firefox does not officially support Windows NT 3.51 , nor Windows 95 , but reportedly functions properly after the application of a few tweaks. Since the Mozilla Foundation makes the Firefox source code available, users can also compile and run Firefox on a variety of other architectures and operating systems. Operating systems not officially supported by the Mozilla developers, but known to run the browser include:
Builds for Windows XP Professional X64 Edition also exist. Support under development for: Internationalization and localization Contributors throughout the world have collaborated in translating the Firefox browser into many frequently used languages/locales, including some of the least often supported locales, such as Chichewa , but excluding Latvian , Malay , Arabic , Thai , Vietnamese , Hindi and Persian . Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the String Literals displayed to users, even users without a programming background can easily complete part of the Internationalization And Localization process, requiring only a simple Text Editor . Web development tools Like the Mozilla Suite, Firefox comes with two web-development tools: a DOM Inspector and a JavaScript Console . Firefox fans claim that no other browser includes the DOM Inspector, and that Firefox's JavaScript Console surpasses the consoles available in other browsers. While not installed by default, the DOM Inspector becomes available via a "custom" install. Firefox supports a number of Extensions that assist in web development, including the powerful Venkman JavaScript Debugger and the integrated web development toolkit named " Web Developer ". Other features Powered by RSS or Atom feeds, Live Bookmarking , another feature of Firefox, allow users to dynamically monitor changes to their favorite news sources. When this feature was first introduced in version 1.0 PR, some users worried that Firefox was beginning to include non-essential features, and succumb to bloat, much like the Mozilla Suite. However, use of web feeds (RSS/Atom) has grown tremendously recently, making RSS-support an essential feature for a growing number of people. Firefox also includes a customizable Download Manager . Users can configure the browser to either open downloaded files automatically or save them directly to the disk. By default, Firefox downloads all files to a user's desktop on Windows and Mac OS X or to the user's home directory on GNU/Linux, but users can easily configure it to prompt for a specific download location. Mozilla Firefox also includes a search bar that can be used to search sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon.com, Ebay, Yahoo, Google, and many others. Security Some of Firefox's key security features include the use of the Sandbox Security Model , Same Origin Policy and external protocol whitelisting . Open Source advocates argue that an important characteristic of Firefox security lies in the fact that anyone can see its source code and that it therefore must rely upon sound security mechanisms rather than Security Through Obscurity . At least one person besides the coder reviews proposed software changes, and typically yet another person carries out a "super-review". Once placed in the software, changes become visible for anyone else to consider, protest against, or improve. In addition, the Mozilla Foundation operates a "bug bounty" scheme: people who report a valid critical security bug receive a US$500 cash reward (for each report) and a Mozilla T-shirt. According to the Mozilla Foundation, this "bug bounty" system aims to "encourage more people to find and report security bugs in our products, so that we can make our products even more secure than they already are." Also, all users can have access to the source code of Mozilla Firefox, to the internal design documentation, to forum discussions, and to other materials that can help in finding bugs. Bug bounties have been paid out numerous times. The Mozilla Foundation has implemented a policy on security bugs in order to help contributors to deal with security vulnerabilities. The policy restricts access to a security-related bug report to members of the security team until after Mozilla has shipped a fix for the problem. This approach aims to minimize the exploitation of publicly known vulnerabilities and to give the developers time to issue a patch. While similar to other "responsible disclosure" policies operated by software vendors such as Microsoft, this policy falls short of the Full Disclosure principle favored by some security researchers. As of April 2006, Secunia has reported 4 unpatched vulnerabilities in Firefox 1.x. The most serious advisory listed is rated "less critical." CRITICISMS See Also: Common criticisms of Mozilla Firefox Firefox has at times attracted criticism for lacking features found in some other browsers. Many users observe that the developers have not implemented frequently requested features. (The developers state in response that they intend for Firefox to be a fairly minimal browser in order to reduce Software Bloat and bugs, while retaining a high degree of Extensibility .) Most of these features, and many others, exist as installable Firefox Extensions , or third-party software. However, not all users wish to install extensions for the features they want, preferring to see them included in the official software package. This difference of opinion was one of the motivating factors behind the development of the Flock browser, which is not a Firefox Fork . Some note that Firefox takes longer to launch than other browsers such as Internet Explorer or Opera on Windows. The non-Windows-native XUL implementation of the user interface may be the cause of this perceived delay. Other Gecko -based browsers such as K-Meleon , which use platform-native user interface implementations, generally run faster than Firefox. IE also launches faster than Firefox on Windows, as many of its components are built into Windows and loaded at startup. It is quite possible that if Internet Explorer did not load its components during booting, it would probably be much slower to start than Firefox. A small percentage of users complain of Firefox using much more memory than other browsers. This has been reported as Memory Leak s ; Mozilla developers claim it is sometimes at least partially an effect of the fast backwards and forwards (FastBack) feature. Another known frequent cause of memory leaks is misbehaving extensions, most notably Adblock . Users switching from Internet Explorer sometimes find that certain websites do not render as expected in Firefox. One such website is MSN.com. MSN.com has been caught and criticised on multiple occasions for deliberately sending broken and manipulated code to non Microsoft browsers to make them show MSN.com in a broken way, and thus causing the users of these non-Microsoft browsers to feel as if the problem lies with their browsers. Opera Software ASA exposed these tactics of MSN.com. Even now, MSN.com occasionally turns up broken on non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox or Opera, possibly in an attempt to make their users switch to Internet Explorer. This is rarely a Firefox-specific problem, and is usually caused by the respective websites using code that does not adhere to W3C standards—such as code specific to Internet Explorer's quirks or utilizing ActiveX controls or VBScript scripts, which are both non-standard Microsoft technologies. There is a Firefox extension called "IE Tab" that allows the Internet Explorer rendering engine to be embedded into Firefox on the Windows platform. This solves rendering issues for certain pages that use Microsoft specific technologies. MARKET ADOPTION ]] 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. According to several sources (as listed in statistics reference), by January 2006, Firefox had around 10% of global usage share. Europe , according to a study released by the firm XiTi on 2006-01-08 , generally had higher percentages of Firefox use, with an average of 20% . Download count Cumulative downloads increased in a near-linear fashion during the first quarter of 2005. In other words, the download rate remained fairly stable. None of the Mozilla Foundation's previous product releases experienced that kind of growth. These download counts did not include downloads using software updates and downloads from third-party websites. The download counter is available as an RSS feed , so that the Firefox download can be added on websites to keep track of the number of downloads in near-realtime. It should be noted that a download count is not a user count, as a single download can be installed over many machines, or one person can download the software multiple times. Spread Firefox campaigns See Also: Spread Firefox The rapid adoption of Firefox apparently accelerated in part due to a series of aggressive community-marketing campaigns since 2004. For example, Blake Ross and Asa Dotzler organized a series of events dubbed "marketing week". On September 14 2004 , a community-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. The "Explorer Destroyer" Campaign Enthusiasts have begun a campaign called " Explorer Destroyer " with the goal of promoting the destruction of Internet Explorer and bolstering support for Firefox instead. Organizers of the campaign have produced a software tool that detects when Internet Explorer users visit Firefox-run websites. This tool is set to give visitors different levels of harassment for using IE, ranging from a gentle nudge to get Firefox all the way to barring IE users from the site. According to the official site, every new Firefox user that is re-routed from using Internet Explorer will earn their references $1 in their Google AdSense accounts. Controversy exists because these funds are unavailable for withdrawal until the balance goes over $100, a fact that many users are unaware of unless they read the fine print. However, if a user formally terminates their AdSense membership by e-mail, then Google will send the balance within 90 days, so long as it is $10 or more. Organization adoption During the FOSDEM 2005 conference, Tristan Nitot , the president of Mozilla Europe , said that he knew "a few companies" that had deployed the Firefox browser or the Thunderbird mail client across a million seats. Those companies remained reluctant to publicize the migration, due to in-house concerns that this might damage their Relationship with Microsoft. According to a CNET article published on May 12 2005 , about 30,000 of IBM 's staff (about 10% of the total) already use Firefox. IBM encourages its employees to use Firefox as the company's standard web browser, with support from the company's Help Desk staff. The Networking Services and Information Technology department of the University Of Chicago started to include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package for all incoming students on the third quarter of 2005. Boston College and Kansas State University recently adopted Firefox as official web browsers across the campus network. BC encourages all students to switch over from Internet Explorer to Firefox on all student dorm computers, citing increased usability and better security features. In December 2005, it was announced that Dell UK were to start shipping the Firefox browser pre-installed on their PCs. Industry adoption Since the pre-1.0 stages, a number of well-known websites and Web Application s, 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. (Link prefetching involves a standards-compliant optimization technique that utilizes the browser's idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future.) 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. 2005 , further affirming the company's interest in Firefox. A number of commercialized versions of the Firefox browser have developed outside the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation. The current version of Netscape, known as Netscape Browser or Netscape 8, combines the functionalities of Firefox and Internet Explorer. And a Start-up , Flock (formerly Round Two, MozSource and more formerly E-Flo), plans to build enhancements for Firefox. Firefox is also used by the 3B Browser , which browses the web as a 3D city of web sites or a 3D store. Portable Firefox Portable Firefox is a repackaged version of Firefox designed to run from a USB Flash Drive , iPod, external hard drive or any other portable media. It arose out of a mozillaZine thread in June of 2004. John T. Haller released the first packaged version and then led development from there. It includes a specialized launcher that adjusts extensions and themes to work as they are moved from computer to computer. It used to use compression (courtesy of UPX and 7-Zip ) however this caused problems with the update engine included in version 1.5 and was therefore scrapped. There is even a portable version of Firefox available for Macintosh computers. {Link without Title} Haller has also started development work on Portable Firefox Live , which aims to run on CD-R or other Read-only media. A number of applications are already using Portable Firefox Live to deliver a browser and HTML-based content from CD. The ''full'' distribution of Firefox has been built and runs on the Sharp Zaurus Linux-based PDA platform under the pdaxrom environment. Opinions and responses Despite Firefox's apparent gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft head of Australia n 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 amongst Microsoft's users. Vamos stated that he himself never used it personally. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but he has commented that "so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" However, according to a Microsoft SEC Filing on June 30 2005 , it 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." FOOTNOTES |
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