Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of volunteers.Mozilla contributors list, Mozilla.org Beginning as a fork of the Navigator component of the Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox has since become the foundation's main development focus (along with the Thunderbird mail and news client), replacing the Mozilla Suite as the foundation's official main software release.

Before the November 9 2004 1.0 release, Firefox had already gained acclaim from numerous media outlets, including ForbesForbes, September 29 2004. and the Wall Street Journal.Wall Street Journal, September 16 2004. Walter Mossberg wrote : "I suggest dumping Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser, which has a history of security breaches. I recommend instead Mozilla Firefox, which is free at www.mozilla.org. It's not only more secure but also more modern and advanced, with tabbed browsing, which allows multiple pages to be open on one screen, and a better pop-up ad blocker than the belated one Microsoft recently added to IE." 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.Stross, New York Times. December 19 2004. The article states that "With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.)" On October 19 2005, Firefox had its 100 millionth download, less than 1 year (just 344 days) after the release of version 1.0 (see Download count below). Firefox 1.5 was released on November 29 2005, with more than 2 million downloads within the first 36 hours.Asa Dotzler - Firefox and more: more than two million

Firefox includes an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, support for open standards, and an extension mechanism for adding functionality. Although other browsers have some of these features, Firefox became the first such browser to include them all and achieve wide adoption.

Firefox has attracted attention as an alternative to other browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari, which are included as standard browsers with versions of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, respectively. This is the main stumbling block for competing browsers as many novice users are still unaware of alternatives.

As of July 2006, estimates suggest that Firefox's usage share is around 12% of overall browser usage (see market adoption below), with its highest usage in Finland (nearly 40% as of January 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.

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 themes and extensions. 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 April 12 2006, the Foundation announced that official releases of Mozilla would cease with version 1.7.13. ^* The Foundation continues to support the 1.7.x branch because of its continued use by many corporate users, and because producers of other software 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 because of 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.Firefox trademark, USPTO 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 Mozilla Firefox - Brand Name Frequently Asked Questions. Mozilla.org) did not "conjure up the right imagery" for Hicks.Branding Firefox. John Hicks' weblog 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.Mozilla Firefox Roadmap (see also: Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Roadmap)

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 March 8 2006, Deer Park 1.6a1 is the only 64-bit 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:

An improved Software Update System that will ease distribution of important security patches and help keep users up-to-date.Ben Goodger discusses the Firefox update system (May 2 2005).
Firefox supports a subset of SVG, but not any of the official profiles (Tiny, Basic, Full). This makes Firefox the second major browser to support some form of SVG natively (Opera 8.0, released on April 19 2005 supports most of the SVG 1.1 Tiny Specification). See Firefox 1.5's SVG status page.
Support for the WHATWG's canvas HTML element.
A new, reorganized options dialog box for changing settings of the browser (similar to preferences windows in Mac OS X).
A "Clear Private Data" action to allow a person to clear their privacy related information without manually clicking the "Clear All" button. Users will have the option of clearing all privacy-related settings simply by exiting the browser or by using a keyboard shortcut, depending on their settings.
Gecko 1.8, an updated version of Firefox's rendering engine
Firefox 1.5 also includes a backlog of bug fixes that were fixed between the 0.9 and the 1.0 release which were previously unavailable due to branching from the trunk around the 0.9 release.

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 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. 1.8 alpha 6 around the corner (December 26 2004). Source: Asa Dotzler's weblog.

Goals for Firefox include:. A table that lists and links the intended features for Firefox 2.

Tabbed browsing improvements
Site-specific options
Extension system enhancements
Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search enhancements
Accessibility compliance
Session Restore
Download resuming across browser sessions, detection of signed executables
Improvements to the search service
Anti-phishing features
Cairo as the rendering layer instead of GDI+

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and future releases of Camino will also include the Java Embedding plugin,Mozilla to include Java Embedding plugin. MozillaZine. 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 code name for Mozilla Firefox 2.0 was Bon Echo, but as of Beta 1 it was officially branded with the Firefox 2 name. The intended date for the release of Firefox 2.0 is September 2006 Firefox 2 development calendar..

The first alpha version (2.0a1) was released on March 21 2006, the second alpha version (2.0a2) was released on May 12 2006Bon Echo Alpha 2 Milestone, and the third alpha version (2.0a3) was released on May 27 2006Bon Echo Alpha 3 Milestone Released. The first beta version (2.0b1) was released on July 12 2006 Firefox 2 Beta 1 Milestone Released.

These releases are aimed primarily at the developer and testing community as there are still some bugs present. Among the additions to the Firefox 2 Beta browser so far are:

Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
Ability to 'Undo' closed tab
Inline spell checking in text boxes
Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
Search suggestions now appear in the search box auto-complete for Google and Yahoo!
New search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
Combining the extensions and themes managers into an "Add-ons" manager
Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
Searching in input fields
A History of recently closed tabs
Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
Client-side session and persistent storage
New anti-phishing features
New Windows installer using the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS)

"Bon Echo", like other Firefox development names, is the name of a public park: Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada.

Version 3.0

The development name for Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is Gran ParadisoThe release timeframe for Firefox 3.0 is first quarter 2007.[http://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseRoadmap Mozilla Release Roadmap.

"Gran Paradiso", like other Firefox development names, is an actual place. "Gran Paradiso" is the name of a national park in Italy.

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 or Windows NT 4.0, Firefox 3.0 will not run on those operating systems. [http://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko_1.9_Roadmap#cairo_Graphics_Substrate

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. 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 several 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. Unfortunately for Wikipedia users, in Firefox 1.x this feature does not extend to the text edit boxes that are used to update articles. As a result, there is no convenient way to search for text in large articles as they are being edited with Firefox. However, Firefox 2 and 3 builds include "find as you type" for textboxes since 2006/07/01.

Firefox also has a built-in search toolbar with an extensible search engine listing. By default, Firefox allows users to search Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Creative Commons, Dictionary.com, and eBay. Users may download more search plugins (including one for Wikipedia) from the Mycroft project or remove any unwanted ones. Additionally, Firefox supports the "custom keyword" feature introduced by the Mozilla Suite. This feature allows users to access their bookmarks 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 gestures, 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.

The extension system can be viewed as a ground for experimentation where new functionalities can be tested. 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 are often 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 by the browsers Safari, Konqueror, Opera (9.0), and iCab, as well as the program Prince. However, an in-development Firefox version passes the test. ^*

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 systemsFirefox System Requirements. Mozilla.org.:

Various versions of Microsoft Windows, including 98, 98SE, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, and Server 2003. A version for USB Smart Drives exists (see "Portable Firefox" below).
Mac OS X. Mozilla Firefox Version 1.5.0.2 was officially released as a universal binary. Various unofficial builds were created earlier, including one made by Apple programmers for the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference.
Linux-based operating systems using the X Window System. For many distributions, Firefox is shipped as the default web browser.

Firefox does not officially support Windows NT 3.51, nor Windows 95, but reportedly functions properly after the application of a few tweaks.Run Firefox in Windows 95 (and Windows 98 original release). Source: John Haller's website. Details a procedure to install Firefox on Windows 95 and the original release of Windows 98.

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:

Solaris (x86 and SPARC)
OS/2 and its successor, eComStation
AIXFirefox release notes for the 1.x series. Mozilla.org.
FreeBSDFreshPort entry on Firefox. freshports.org.
IRIX
NetBSD
OpenBSD
BeOS/Haiku/Zeta
SkyOS
RISC OS (ARM)Firefox Port to RISC OS project page

Builds for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition also exist. 1 Support is under development for Amiga as well.

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, 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. While not installed by default, the DOM Inspector becomes available via a "custom" install.

Firefox supports several extensions that assist in web development, including the powerful Venkman JavaScript debugger and the integrated web development toolkit named "Web Developer".

Other features

Live bookmarking allows users to dynamically monitor changes to their favorite news sources. It is powered by RSS or Atom feeds. When this feature was first introduced in version 1.0 PR, some users worried that Firefox was beginning to include non-essential features and succumbing to bloat, much like the Mozilla Suite. However, use of web feeds 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.

Security

Some of Firefox's key security features include the use of the sandbox security modelExtensions, however, are not sandboxed at all. After installation, they have full access to the operating system (with the user's privilege level) via XPCOM-interfaces., same origin policy and external protocol whitelisting External Protocol Whitelisting. Neil Turner's weblog..

Open source advocates argue that an important characteristic of Firefox security is that anyone can see its source code; 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 another person carries out a "super-review". Once placed in the software, changes become visible for anyone else to consider, protest, or improve.Hacking Mozilla. Mozilla.org.

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.Mozilla Security Bug Bounty Program. Mozilla.org. 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."Mozilla Security Bug Bounty FAQ. Mozilla.org. 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.Handling Mozilla Security Bugs. Mozilla.org. 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 only reported 3 unpatched vulnerabilities out of 30 Secunia advisories, with 1 partial fix in Firefox 1.x. The most serious advisory listed is rated "less critical."

Firefox uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography. It also supports smartcards for secure login to web servers.

Criticisms

Startup time

Some note that Firefox takes longer to launch than other browsers such as Internet Explorer or Opera on Windows. Other Gecko-based browsers such as K-Meleon, which use platform-native user interface implementations, generally run faster than Firefox. IE also launches slightly faster than Firefox on Microsoft Windows since many of its components are built into Windows and are loaded at startup.On Microsoft Windows, this can be addressed by using the open-source [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffpreloader/ FFPreloader Utility.

Memory use

Some users complain that Firefox uses more memory than other browsers. This has been reported as memory leaks Firefox 1.5: Not Ready For Prime Time?. InternetWeek.; Mozilla developers claim it is sometimes at least partially an effect of the fast backwards and forwards (FastBack) feature. Bug 319262 - Significant memory leak. Mozilla.org Bugzilla. Other known causes of memory problems are misbehaving extensions, such as Google Toolbar and Adblock. Problematic Extensions. MozillaZine Knowledge Base.

Webpage rendition

Users switching from Internet Explorer sometimes find that certain websites do not render as expected in Firefox. This, however, 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, utilizing ActiveX controls or VBScript scripts, which are both proprietary Microsoft technologies and are not W3C standards.

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 aims to solve rendering issues for those pages that use Microsoft specific technologies, but it puts the user at risk from vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.^*

Windows installer support

Mozilla Firefox does not provide an MSI package, although some third parties created one. Administrators who want to deploy Firefox on many Microsoft Windows computers at once would need an MSI installer to do it centrally, without having to manually install it on each computer. The absence of this feature makes it difficult to rapidly distribute the browser on large networks (as in a corporate setting), and is cited frequently as an obstacle to the wide adoption of the browser in professional workgroups ^*.

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. 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

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.

**Downloads of Firefox 1.x since November 9 2004**
Date	Number of days	Downloads (millions)	References
November 10 2004	1	1	1,000,000+ downloads on day 1
February 16 2005	99	25	firefox 25,000,000
April 29 2005	171	50	celebrating 50 million firefox downloads
July 26 2005	259	75	Firefox Exceeds 75 million Downloads
October 19 2005	344	100	firefox hits one hundred million downloads
March 3 2006	479	150	150 million and counting!

These download counts do 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

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.

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. 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.Where can I upgrade my browser? Blogger Help. On May 18 2005, eBay announced support for Firefox for its eBay Picture Manager.eBay Picture Manager Enhancements. eBay. The community website Vampire Freaks also recommends use of the browser.^*. Vampire Freaks .

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.

Several 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. Flock plans to build enhancements for Firefox.Round Two looks to launch enhanced Firefox. MozillaNews. Firefox is used by the 3B browser, which browses the web as a 3D city of web sites or a 3D store.

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; support is provided by the company's help desk staff.

In December 2005, it was announced that Dell UK would start shipping the Firefox browser pre-installed on their PCs. Firefox shipping on Dell UK. blakeross.com.

Institutional 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 because of in-house concerns that this might damage their relationship with Microsoft.Firefox sneaks into the enterprise. ZDNet UK.

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.UChicago to Distribute Firefox and Thunderbird. Inside Aebrahim's Head.

Boston College and Kansas State University recently adopted Firefox as official web browsers across the campus network. Boston College encourages all students to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox on all student dorm computers, citing increased usability and better security features.

Portable Firefox

Portable Firefox is a repackaged version of Firefox designed to run from a USB flash drive, iPod, external hard drive or other portable media. It arose out of a mozillaZine thread in June of 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 from different computers.

There is also a portable version of Firefox available for Macintosh computers. ^*

Haller has started development work on Portable Firefox Live, which aims to run on CD-R or other read-only media. Many 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.

Response from the competition

Despite Firefox's apparent gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft 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 amongst Microsoft's users. Vamos stated that he himself never used it personally.Microsoft: Firefox does not threaten IE's market share. ZDNet. 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?"The assault on software giant Microsoft. BBC News.

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."Firefox a threat. MozillaZine.

Footnotes

References

14/2005, page 202.

Books

External links

Mozilla Firefox homepage – For end-users.
Mozilla Firefox project page – For developers.
Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar included
Firefox Addons
Firefox Flicks
SpreadFirefox
Firefox section of the MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Collection of all Firefox Extensions
Portable Firefox
Portable Firefox for Mac OS X
Firefox Extensions Guide Extensions for users and developers and some useful hacks.
The Burning Edge – Developments in nightly builds of Mozilla Firefox.
FireFix - Automates the process of downloading and installing the latest Mac-compatible Firefox Nightly build and creates a backup copy of the previously installed build. (Mac OS X-only)
Secunia advisories for Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla "Deer Park" 64-bit Firefox-based web browser
Firefox older versions - All of the old versions from version 0.8 to the latest one
Optimized Firefox for Mac OS X - User-contributed optimized Firefox builds for Apple G4, G5, and Intel processors.

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