About Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and a large community of external contributors. Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx and popularly abbreviated FF, started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation.
Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD,OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
Firefox's source code is freely available under the terms of the Mozilla tri-license as free and open source software. The current stable release of Firefox is version 2.0.0.3, released on March 20, 2007.
Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed 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 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 February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox (Firefox for short).
The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. In addition to stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update to Firefox—version 1.5—on November 29, 2005. On October 24, 2006, 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.
Firefox uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol. It uses a sandbox security model and the developers use a "bug bounty" scheme, for finding fixes for some security and feature additions. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.
Because Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.
A 2006 Symantec study showed that Firefox had surpassed other browsers, including Internet Explorer, in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September; these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in IE and other browsers. Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities, as counted by security researchers. As of February 25, 2007, Firefox 2 has two of six security vulnerabilities unpatched, marked "not critical" and "less critical" by Secunia.Internet Explorer has five of seven security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "moderately critical" by Secunia.(Note that the number of "Secunia Advisories" listed for each doesn't reflect on the actual number of vulnerabilities reported for each. Advisory SA23282 for Mozilla Firefox 2.0.x contains multiple vulnerabilities.)
Forbes.com called Firefox the best browser in a 2004 commentary piece.PC World named Firefox the "product of the year" in 2005 on their "100 Best Products of 2005" list. After the release of Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, PC World reviewed both and announced that Firefox was the better browser.
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 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 some old versions of Adblock,or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader.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,which was confirmed by browser speed tests. 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.
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.
Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD,OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
Firefox's source code is freely available under the terms of the Mozilla tri-license as free and open source software. The current stable release of Firefox is version 2.0.0.3, released on March 20, 2007.
Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed 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 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 February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox (Firefox for short).
The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. In addition to stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update to Firefox—version 1.5—on November 29, 2005. On October 24, 2006, 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.
Firefox uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol. It uses a sandbox security model and the developers use a "bug bounty" scheme, for finding fixes for some security and feature additions. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.
Because Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.
A 2006 Symantec study showed that Firefox had surpassed other browsers, including Internet Explorer, in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September; these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in IE and other browsers. Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities, as counted by security researchers. As of February 25, 2007, Firefox 2 has two of six security vulnerabilities unpatched, marked "not critical" and "less critical" by Secunia.Internet Explorer has five of seven security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "moderately critical" by Secunia.(Note that the number of "Secunia Advisories" listed for each doesn't reflect on the actual number of vulnerabilities reported for each. Advisory SA23282 for Mozilla Firefox 2.0.x contains multiple vulnerabilities.)
Forbes.com called Firefox the best browser in a 2004 commentary piece.PC World named Firefox the "product of the year" in 2005 on their "100 Best Products of 2005" list. After the release of Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, PC World reviewed both and announced that Firefox was the better browser.
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 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 some old versions of Adblock,or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader.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,which was confirmed by browser speed tests. 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.
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.
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