Mozilla Firefox is a
free and open sourceFree and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
descended from the
Mozilla Application SuiteThe Mozilla Application Suite is a cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator...
and managed by
Mozilla CorporationThe Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey Navigator web browsers and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by a growing global community of...
. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide
usage share of web browsersThe usage share of a web browser is the proportion, often expressed as a percentage, of users of all web browsers who use that particular browser. This figure can only be estimated, typically by determining the proportion of visitors to a group of websites that use a particular web browser...
. The browser has had particular success in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and
AfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, where it is the most popular browser with 50% and 35% usage respectively.
To display web pages, Firefox uses the
GeckoGecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....
layout engineA web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...
, which implements most current
web standardsWeb standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites,...
in addition to several features that are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.
Features include
tabbed browsingIn the area of graphical user interfaces , a tabbed document interface is one that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents...
,
spell checkingIn computing, a spell checker is an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary,...
,
incremental findIn computing, incremental search, incremental find or real-time suggestions is a user interface interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible matches for the text are found and immediately presented to the user...
, live bookmarking, a
download managerA download manager is a computer program dedicated to the task of downloading possibly unrelated stand-alone files from the Internet for storage...
,
private browsingPrivacy mode, sometimes informally referred to as "porn mode", or "private browsing" is a term that refers to privacy features in some web browsers. Historically speaking, web browsers store information such as browsing history, images, videos and text within cache...
, location-aware browsing (also known as "
geolocationGeolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal...
") based exclusively on a
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through
extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.
Firefox runs on various operating systems including
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
,
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
,
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
,
FreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, and many other platforms. Its current stable release is version 8.0.1, released on .
History
The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by
Dave HyattDave Hyatt is an American software developer currently employed by Apple Inc. , where he is part of the development team responsible for the Safari web browser and WebKit framework. Hyatt was part of the original team that shipped the beta releases and 1.0 release of Safari...
,
Joe HewittJoe Hewitt is a software programmer who is best known for his work on the Firefox web browser and related software development tools like Firebug and DOM Inspector....
and
Blake RossBlake Aaron Ross is an American software developer who is known for his work on the Mozilla web browser; in particular, he started the Mozilla Firefox project with Dave Hyatt, as well as the Spread Firefox project with Asa Dotzler while working as a contractor at the Mozilla Foundation...
. They believed the commercial requirements of
Netscape'sNetscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the
Mozilla Suite'sThe Mozilla Application Suite is a cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator...
software bloatSoftware bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program include an increasing proportion of unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.-Causes:Software developers...
, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the
Mozilla OrganizationThe Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and
ThunderbirdMozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
.
Early versions
The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of
trademarkA trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
issues with
Phoenix TechnologiesPhoenix Technologies Ltd designs, develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices. Phoenix's products — commonly referred to as BIOS or firmware — support and enable the compatibility, connectivity, security and management of the various components and...
. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the
FirebirdFirebird is an open source SQL relational database management system that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix. The database forked from Borland's open source edition of InterBase in 2000, but since Firebird 1.5 the code has been largely rewritten ....
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. After further pressure from the database server's development community, on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox, often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla prefers that Firefox be abbreviated as Fx or fx, though it is often abbreviated as FF. The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. After a series of stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update, Firefox version 1.5, on November 29, 2005. Firefox 1.5.0.12 is the final version officially supported under
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
.
Version 2.0
On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes updates to the tabbed browsing environment; the extensions manager; the
GUI (Graphical User Interface)In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
; and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-
phishingPhishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
feature which was implemented by
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
as an extension, and later merged into the program itself. In December 2007, Firefox Live Chat was launched. It allows users to ask volunteers questions through a system powered by
Jive SoftwareJive Software is a software company in the social business software industry based in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 2001, Jive maintains additional offices in Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, Frankfurt, Germany, Tel Aviv, Israel, and London, UK.-Products:...
, with guaranteed hours of operation and the possibility of help after hours. Firefox 2.0.0.20 is the final version which can run under an unmodified installation of
Windows NT 4.0Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...
,
Windows 98Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
, and
Windows MEWindows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006....
.
Version 3.0
Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008, by the
Mozilla CorporationThe Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey Navigator web browsers and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by a growing global community of...
. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Mozilla
GeckoGecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....
layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web
APIsAn application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
. Other new features include a redesigned download manager, a new "Places" system for storing bookmarks and history, and separate
themesIn computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance details, used to customize the look and feel of an operating system, widget set or window manager....
for different operating systems. The latest version under 3.0 is Firefox 3.0.19.
Development stretches back to the first Firefox 3 beta (under the codename 'Gran Paradiso') which had been released several months earlier on 19 November 2007, and was followed by several more beta releases in spring 2008 culminating in the June release. Firefox 3 had more than 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, setting a
Guinness World RecordGuinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
.
Version 3.5
Version 3.5, codenamed
Shiretokocovers most of the Shiretoko Peninsula at the northeastern tip of the island of Hokkaidō, Japan.The word "Shiretoko" is derived form an Ainu word "sir etok", meaning "end of the Earth"....
, adds a variety of new features to Firefox. Initially numbered Firefox 3.1, Mozilla developers decided to change the numbering of the release to 3.5, in order to reflect a significantly greater scope of changes than originally planned. The final release was on June 30, 2009. The changes included much faster performance thanks to an upgrade to SpiderMonkey
JavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
engine called TraceMonkey and rendering improvements, and support for the
<video> and
<audio> tags as defined in the HTML 5 specification, with a goal to offer
videoVideo is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
playback without being encumbered by
patentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
issues associated with many video technologies. Cross-site
XMLHttpRequestXMLHttpRequest is an API available in web browser scripting languages such as JavaScript. It is used to send HTTP or HTTPS requests directly to a web server and load the server response data directly back into the script. The data might be received from the server as XML text or as plain text...
s (XHR), which can allow for more powerful web applications and an easier way to implement
mashupsIn Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services...
, are also implemented in 3.5. A new global
JSONJSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...
object contains native functions to efficiently and safely
serialize and deserializeIn computer science, in the context of data storage and transmission, serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored and "resurrected" later in the same or another computer environment...
JSON objects, as specified by the
ECMAScriptECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript...
3.1 draft. Full
CSS 3 selector support has been added. Firefox 3.5 uses the Gecko 1.9.1 engine, which includes a few features that were not included in the 3.0 release.
Multi-touchIn computing, multi-touch refers to a touch sensing surface's ability to recognize the presence of two or more points of contact with the surface...
trackpad support was also added to the release, including
gesture supportGesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or state but commonly originate from the face or hand. Current focuses in the field include emotion...
like pinching for zooming and swiping for back and forward. Firefox 3.5 also features an updated logo.
Version 3.6
Version 3.6 (latest version 3.6.24) is the release codenamed
NamorokaTsingy de Namoroka Strict Nature Reserve, also known as Namoroka National Park, is a strict nature reserve located in the northwestern part of Madagascar in the Mahajanga Province, specifically, the Soalala District.- Climate and geography :...
. Development for this version started on December 1, 2008, and it was released on January 21, 2010. This release uses the Gecko 1.9.2
rendering engineA web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...
.
New features for Firefox 3.6 include built-in support for Personas (toolbar skins), notification of out-of-date plugins, full screen playback of
TheoraTheora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....
video, support for the
WOFFThe Web Open Font Format is a font format for use in web pages. It was developed during 2009 and is in the process of being standardized as a recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium Web Fonts Working Group....
open webfont format, a more secure plugin system, and many performance improvements.
Out-of-process plug-ins
One minor update to Firefox 3.6, version 3.6.4 (code-named
LorentzLorentz National Park is located in the Indonesian province of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya . With an area of 25,056 km² , it is the largest national park in South-East Asia...
) features "Crash Protection" (also called out-of-process plug-ins, or OOPP), which isolates execution of plug-ins into a separate process, preventing a plug-in crash from bringing down the whole browser.
In the initial release only 3 plug-ins were isolated by default:
Adobe Flash PlayerAdobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
,
Apple QuicktimeQuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
, and
Microsoft SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for web browsers running under Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X...
, and the feature was available only in the Windows and Linux builds. Mac OS X 10.6 support was added in Firefox 4. Firefox 3.6.6 increased the amount of time a plug-in is allowed to be unresponsive to the point before the plug-in would quit.
Starting with Lorentz, Mozilla plans to release non-intrusive changes as minor updates that previously included only stability and security fixes.
Version 4.0
Released on March 22, 2011, Firefox 4 was codenamed "Tumucumaque" after
Tumucumaque National ParkThe Tumucumaque National Park is situated in northwestern Brazil inside the Amazon Rainforest state of Amapá. It’s bordered to the north by French Guyana and Suriname....
.
Version 4 brought a new
user interfaceThe user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
and is said to be faster. Early mockups of the new interface on
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
,
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, and
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
were first made available in July 2009. Other new features included improved notifications, tab groups, application tabs, a redesigned add-on manager, integration with Firefox Sync, and support for multitouch displays.
On October 13, 2006,
Brendan EichBrendan Eich is a computer programmer and creator of the JavaScript scripting language. He is the chief technology officer at the Mozilla Corporation.-Education:...
, Mozilla's
Chief Technology OfficerA chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....
, wrote about the plans for "Mozilla 2", referring to the most comprehensive iteration (since its creation) of the overall platform on which Firefox and other Mozilla products run. Most of the objectives were gradually incorporated into Firefox through versions 3.0, 3.5, and 3.6. The largest changes, however, were planned for Firefox 4.
Firefox 4 was based on the
GeckoGecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....
2.0 engine, which added or improved support for HTML5, CSS3,
WebMWebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....
, and
WebGLWebGL is a software library that extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within any compatible web browser...
. It also included a new JavaScript engine (
JägerMonkeyJägerMonkey is a JavaScript engine released for Firefox 4 and later versions. It has "Method JIT" and a new assembler based on Safari's Nitro...
) and better
XPCOMXPCOM is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Microsoft COM and CORBA. It has multiple language bindings and IDL descriptions so programmers can plug their custom functionality into the framework and connect it with other components.-The model:XPCOM is one of the main...
APIs.
Rapid release
In April 2011, the development process was split into several "channels", each working on a build in a different stage of development. The most recent available build is called "Nightly Builds" and offers the latest, untested features and updates. The "Aurora" build is up to six weeks behind "Nightly" and offers functionality that has undergone basic testing. The "Beta" channel is another six weeks away. It provides improved stability over the nightly builds and is the first development milestone that has the "Firefox" logo. "Release" is the current official version of Firefox. New releases are planned to occur in six to sixteen week intervals. The aim of this faster-paced process is to get new functions to users faster.
Version 5.0
Firefox 5 was released on June 21, 2011, only three months after the major release of Firefox 4. Firefox 5 is the first release as part of Mozilla's new rapid release plan, matching Google Chrome's rapid release schedule and rapid version number increments.
Version 6.0
Mozilla released its Mozilla Firefox 6.0 on August 16, 2011. The update brought: permissions manager, new address bar highlighting, streamlined the look of the site identity block, quicker startup time and many other new features.
Version 7.0
Firefox 7, released September 27, 2011, uses as much as 50% less memory than Firefox 4 as a result of the MemShrink project to reduce Firefox memory usage. Mozilla Firefox 7.0.1 was released a few days later, fixing a rare but serious issue with add-ons not being detected by the browser.
Version 8.0
Firefox 8 was released on 8 November 2011, and is currently the latest stable version in the "Stable" channel. Firefox 8 ensured that users really wanted any previously installed add-ons. Upon installation, a dialog box prompted users to enable or disable the add-ons. Add-ons installed by third-party programs were disabled by default, but user-installed add-ons were enabled by default. Mozilla judged that third-party-installed add-ons were problematic, taking away user control, lagging behind on compatibility and security updates, slowing down Firefox start-up and page loading time, and cluttering the interface with unused toolbars.
Future releases
Test builds can be downloaded from the Firefox development channels:
"Beta",
"Aurora", and
"Nightly Builds".
Currently (November 2011), a Firefox 9 beta release is in the "Beta" channel, a Firefox 10 alpha release is in the "Aurora" channel, and a Firefox 11 alpha release is in the "Nightly Builds" channel.
Features planned for future versions include silent updating so that version increments will not bother the user, although the user will be able to disable that function. A different looking user-interface called "Australis" is also planned.
Version release table
| Browser name |
Gecko version |
Version |
Support status |
Codename |
Release date |
| Phoenix |
1.2 |
0.1 |
|
Pescadero Pescadero is a census-designated place in San Mateo County, California two miles east of State Route 1 and Pescadero State Beach. The center of town, on Pescadero Creek Road, is located at latitude 37.255 and longitude 122.38028. The town is south of Half Moon Bay. The ZIP Code is 94060 and...
|
September 23, 2002 |
| 0.2 |
|
Santa CruzSanta Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
|
October 01, 2002 |
| 0.3 |
|
Lucia Lucia is an unincorporated community in Monterey County, California. It is located east of Lopez Point, at an elevation of 354 feet . Lucia is one of the three small settlements of restaurants, and motels located along State Route 1 on the Big Sur coast...
|
October 14, 2002 |
| 1.3 |
0.4 |
|
Oceano Oceano is a census-designated place in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. The population was 7,286 at the 2010 census, up from 7,260 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Oceano is located at ....
|
October 19, 2002 |
| 0.5 |
|
Naples Naples is a neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States, built on a series of islands located in Alamitos Bay. Naples consists of three separate islands, divided by canals which open into the bay. Most of the streets on the island have Italianate names...
|
December 07, 2002 |
| Firebird |
1.5 |
0.6 |
|
GlendaleGlendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
|
May 17, 2003 |
| 0.7 |
|
Indio Indio is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, located in the Coachella Valley of Southern California's Colorado Desert region. It lies east of Palm Springs, east of Riverside, and east of Los Angeles. It is about north of Mexicali, Baja California on the U.S.-Mexican border...
|
October 15, 2003 |
| Firefox |
1.6 |
0.8 |
|
Royal Oak - to the north-east - to the east - to the south-east - to the south - to the south-west - to the west - to the north-west Epsom One Tree Hill Oranga Onehunga...
|
February 09, 2004 |
| 1.7 |
0.9 |
|
One Tree HillOne Tree Hill is a 182 metre volcanic peak located in Auckland, New Zealand. It is an important memorial place for both Māori and other New Zealanders...
|
June 15, 2004 |
| Firefox 1 |
1.0 |
|
PhoenixPhoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
|
November 09, 2004 |
| 1.0.8 |
|
|
April 13, 2006 |
| Firefox 1.5 |
1.8 |
1.5 |
|
Deer ParkDeer Park is a hamlet and census-designated place in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 27,745 at the 2010 census.-History:...
|
November 29, 2005 |
| 1.5.0.12 |
|
|
May 30, 2007 |
| Firefox 2 |
1.8.1 |
2.0 |
|
Bon EchoBon Echo Provincial Park is a provincial park in South Central Ontario north of Kaladar, Ontario, approximately 6 km north of Cloyne.Bon Echo features several lakes, including part of Mazinaw Lake, the second-deepest lake in Ontario...
|
October 24, 2006 |
| 2.0.0.20 |
|
|
December 18, 2008 |
| Firefox 3 |
1.9 |
3.0 |
|
Gran ParadisoThe Gran Paradiso is a mountain group between the Aosta Valley and Piedmont regions of north-west Italy. The peak, the 7th highest mountain in the Graian Alps with an elevation of 4,061 m, is close to Mont Blanc on the nearby border with France. On the French side of the border, the park is...
|
June 17, 2008 |
| 3.0.19 |
|
|
March 30, 2010 |
| Firefox 3.5 |
1.9.1 |
3.5 |
|
Shiretokocovers most of the Shiretoko Peninsula at the northeastern tip of the island of Hokkaidō, Japan.The word "Shiretoko" is derived form an Ainu word "sir etok", meaning "end of the Earth"....
|
June 30, 2009 |
| 3.5.19 |
|
|
April 28, 2011 |
| Firefox 3.6 |
1.9.2 |
3.6 |
|
Namoroka Tsingy de Namoroka Strict Nature Reserve, also known as Namoroka National Park, is a strict nature reserve located in the northwestern part of Madagascar in the Mahajanga Province, specifically, the Soalala District.- Climate and geography :...
|
January 21, 2010 |
| 3.6.24 |
|
|
November 08, 2011 |
| Firefox 4 |
2.0 |
4.0 |
|
Tumucumaque The Tumucumaque National Park is situated in northwestern Brazil inside the Amazon Rainforest state of Amapá. It’s bordered to the north by French Guyana and Suriname....
|
March 22, 2011 |
| 4.0.1 |
|
|
April 28, 2011 |
| Firefox 5 |
5.0 |
5.0 |
|
|
June 21, 2011 |
| 5.0.1 |
|
|
July 11, 2011 |
| Firefox 6 |
6.0 |
6.0 |
|
|
August 16, 2011 |
| 6.0.2 |
|
|
September 06, 2011 |
| Firefox 7 |
7.0 |
7.0 |
|
|
September 27, 2011 |
| 7.0.1 |
|
|
September 29, 2011 |
| Firefox 8 |
8.0 |
8.0 |
|
|
November 08, 2011 |
| 8.0.1 |
|
|
November 21, 2011 |
| Firefox 9 Beta |
9.0 |
9.0 Beta 1 |
|
|
November 11, 2011 |
| Firefox 10 Alpha |
10.0 |
10.0a1 |
|
|
Usually daily |
| Firefox 11 Alpha |
11.0 |
11.0a1 |
|
|
Usually daily |
| Browser name |
Gecko version |
Version |
Support status |
Codename |
Release date |
Features
Principal Firefox features include
tabbed browsingIn the area of graphical user interfaces , a tabbed document interface is one that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents...
,
spell checkingIn computing, a spell checker is an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary,...
,
incremental findIn computing, incremental search, incremental find or real-time suggestions is a user interface interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible matches for the text are found and immediately presented to the user...
, live bookmarking, a
download managerA download manager is a computer program dedicated to the task of downloading possibly unrelated stand-alone files from the Internet for storage...
,
private browsingPrivacy mode, sometimes informally referred to as "porn mode", or "private browsing" is a term that refers to privacy features in some web browsers. Historically speaking, web browsers store information such as browsing history, images, videos and text within cache...
,
location-aware browsingGeolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal...
based on a
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through
extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.
Additionally, Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the
DOM InspectorDOM Inspector is a web developer tool created by Joe Hewitt and was originally included in Mozilla Application Suite as well as versions of Mozilla Firefox prior to Firefox 3. It is now included by default in SeaMonkey and is an installable extension for subsequent versions of Firefox and other...
, or extensions, such as
FirebugFirebug is a web development tool that facilitates the debugging, editing, and monitoring of any website's CSS, HTML, DOM, XHR, and JavaScript; it also provides other web development tools. Firebug's JavaScript panel can log errors, profile function calls, and enable the developer to run arbitrary...
.
Standards
Firefox implements many
web standardsWeb standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites,...
, including
HTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
,
XMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
,
XHTMLXHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
,
MathMLMathematical Markup Language is an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web pages and other documents...
,
SVGScalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...
1.1 (partial),
CSSCascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
(with extensions), ECMAScript (
JavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
),
DOMThe Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...
,
XSLTXSLT is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. The original document is not changed; rather, a new document is created based on the content of an existing one. The new document may be serialized by the processor in standard XML syntax or in another format,...
,
XPathXPath is a language for selecting nodes from an XML document. In addition, XPath may be used to compute values from the content of an XML document...
, and
APNGThe Animated Portable Network Graphics file format is an unofficial extension to the Portable Network Graphics specification. It allows for animated PNG files that work similarly to animated GIF files, while supporting 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency not available for GIFs...
(Animated PNG) images with
alpha transparencyIn computer graphics, alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a...
. Firefox also implements standards proposals created by the
WHATWGThe Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group is a community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software in 2004. Since then, the editor of the WHATWG specifications, Ian...
such as client-side storage, and canvas element.
Firefox passes the
Acid2Acid2 is a test page published and promoted by the Web Standards Project to expose web page rendering flaws in web browsers and other applications that render HTML. Named after the acid test for gold, it was developed in the spirit of Acid1, a relatively narrow test of compliance with the Cascading...
standards-compliance test from version 3.0. Firefox versions up to and including 6.0.2 did not pass the
Acid3Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model and JavaScript....
test. Mozilla had originally stated that they did not intend for Firefox to pass the Acid3 test fully because they believed that the SVG fonts part of the test had become outdated and irrelevant, due to WOFF being agreed upon as a standard by all major browser makers. Because the SVG font tests were removed from the Acid3 test in September 2011, Firefox 4 and greater now score 100/100.
Firefox also implements a proprietary protocol from Google called "safebrowsing" (used to exchange data related with "phishing and malware protection"), which is not an
open standardAn open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....
.
Security
Firefox uses a
sandbox security modelIn computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs. It is often used to execute untested code, or untrusted programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers, untrusted users and untrusted websites....
, and limits scripts from accessing data from other web sites based on the
same origin policyIn computing, the same origin policy is an important security concept for a number of browser-side programming languages, such as JavaScript. The policy permits scripts running on pages originating from the same site to access each other's methods and properties with no specific restrictions, but...
. It uses
SSL/TLSTransport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet...
to protect communications with web servers using strong
cryptographyCryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
when using the HTTPS protocol. It also provides support for web applications to use
smartcardsA smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card , is any pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits. A smart card or microprocessor cards contain volatile memory and microprocessor components. The card is made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes acrylonitrile...
for authentication purposes.
The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early
disclosure of vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, full disclosure means to disclose all the details of a security problem which are known. It is a philosophy of security management completely opposed to the idea of security through obscurity...
so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.
Because Firefox generally has fewer publicly known unpatched security
vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
than
Internet ExplorerWindows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
(see
Comparison of web browsersThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.-Historical web browsers:...
), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
reports that exploit code for known, critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for known, critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla issued a patch to remedy the problem.
A 2006
SymantecSymantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
study showed that, although Firefox had surpassed other browsers in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September, these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in other browsers. Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, as counted by security researchers. As of February 11, 2011, Firefox 3.6 has no (known) unpatched security
vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
according to
SecuniaSecunia is a Danish computer security service provider best known for tracking vulnerabilities in a large variety of software and operating systems.Numbers of "unpatched" vulnerabilities in popular applications are frequently quoted in software comparisons....
. Internet Explorer 8 has five unpatched security vulnerabilities, the worst being rated "Less Critical" by Secunia.
In October 2009, Microsoft's security engineers acknowledged that Firefox was vulnerable since February of that year due to a
.NET FrameworkThe .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
3.5 SP1
Windows updateWindows Update is a service provided by Microsoft that provides updates for the Microsoft Windows operating system and its installed components, including Internet Explorer...
that silently installed a buggy 'Windows Presentation Foundation' plug-in into Firefox. This vulnerability has since been patched by Microsoft.
All patched
vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
of Mozilla products are publicly listed.
Telemetry
When Firefox is upgraded to version 7.0, an information bar will appear asking users whether they would like to send performance statistics (also known as “telemetry”) to
MozillaThe Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey Navigator web browsers and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by a growing global community of...
. According to Mozilla's privacy policy, these statistics are stored only in aggregate format, and the only personally-identifiable information transmitted is the user's
IP addressAn Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
.
Localizations
Firefox is a heavily
localizedIn computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...
web browser. The first official release in November 2004 was available in 24 different languages and for 28
localeIn computing, locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface...
s, including
British EnglishBritish English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
/
American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
,
European SpanishPeninsular Spanish, also known as European Spanish, refers to the varieties of the Spanish language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, as opposed to the Spanish spoken in the Americas and in the Canary Islands....
/Argentine Spanish and Chinese in Traditional Chinese characters/Simplified Chinese characters.
Currently supported versions 3.6 and 8.0 are available for
76 locales (68 languages)
and 83 locales (74 languages)
respectively.
Portable versions
There is a portable edition of Firefox for Windows, which can be used from a
USB Flash driveA flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...
. This particular distribution makes it possible to run Firefox (and many of its extensions) on corporate/government networks in lieu of the default browser. This can be especially helpful for any user who does not possess administrative rights on the system being used.
Firefox for mobile
Firefox for mobile, codenamed Fennec, is a web browser for smaller non-PC devices,
mobile phoneA mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s and
PDAA PDA is most commonly a Personal digital assistant, also known as a Personal data assistant, a mobile electronic device.PDA may also refer to:In science, medicine and technology:...
s. It was first released for the
NokiaNokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
Maemo operating system (specifically the Nokia N900) on January 28, 2010. Version 4 for Android and Maemo was released on March 29, 2011. The browser's version number was bumped from version 2 to version 4 to synchronize with all future desktop releases of Firefox since the rendering engines used in both browsers are the same. Version 7 will be the last release for Maemo on the N900. The user interface is completely redesigned and optimized for small screens, the controls are hidden away so that only the web content is shown on screen, and it uses
touchscreenA touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...
interaction methods. It includes the Awesomebar, tabbed browsing, Add-on support, password manager, location-aware browsing, and the ability to synchronize with the user's computer Firefox browser using Firefox Sync.
System requirements
Browsers
compiledA compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
from Firefox source code may run on various operating systems; however, officially distributed binaries are meant for the following:
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
(
2000Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
,
XPWindows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
,
Server 2003Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
,
VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
or 7), Mac OS X 10.5, Mac OS X 10.6 and
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
(with the following libraries installed:
GTK+GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
2.10 or higher,
GLibGLib is a cross-platform software utility library that began as part of the GTK+ project. However, before releasing version 2 of GTK+, the project's developers decided to separate non-GUI-specific code from the GTK+ platform, thus creating GLib as a separate product...
2.12 or higher,
PangoPango is an LGPL licensed open source computing library used by software developers for laying out and rendering text in high quality, emphasising support for multilingual text...
1.14 or higher,
X.OrgX.Org Server refers to the X server release packages stewarded by the X.Org Foundation,which is hosted by freedesktop.org, and grants...
1.0 or higher (1.7 or higher is recommended), libstdc++ 4.3 or higher). Official recommended hardware requirements are a
Pentium 4Pentium 4 was a line of single-core desktop and laptop central processing units , introduced by Intel on November 20, 2000 and shipped through August 8, 2008. They had a 7th-generation x86 microarchitecture, called NetBurst, which was the company's first all-new design since the introduction of the...
or newer that supports
SSE2SSE2, Streaming SIMD Extensions 2, is one of the Intel SIMD processor supplementary instruction sets first introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2001. It extends the earlier SSE instruction set, and is intended to fully supplant MMX. Intel extended SSE2 to create SSE3...
and 512
MBThe megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
RAMRandom access memory is a form of computer data storage. Today, it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow stored data to be accessed in any order with a worst case performance of constant time. Strictly speaking, modern types of DRAM are therefore not random access, as data is read in...
for the
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
version or
MacintoshThe Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computer with an
IntelIntel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
x86 processor and 512 MB RAM for Mac version.
Official minimum hardware requirements are a
PentiumA Pentium compatible processor is a 32-bit processor computer chip which supports the instructions in the IA-32 instruction set that were implemented by the Intel P5 Pentium processor family...
233
MHzThe hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
and 64
MBThe megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
RAMRandom access memory is a form of computer data storage. Today, it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow stored data to be accessed in any order with a worst case performance of constant time. Strictly speaking, modern types of DRAM are therefore not random access, as data is read in...
for the
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
version or
MacintoshThe Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computer with an
IntelIntel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
x86 or
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
G3,
G4PowerPC G4 is a designation used by Apple Computer to describe a fourth generation of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various processor models from Freescale, a former part of Motorola....
, or
G5The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, PowerPC 970GX, and PowerPC 970MP, are 64-bit Power Architecture processors from IBM introduced in 2002. When used in Apple Inc. machines, they were dubbed the PowerPC G5....
processor and 128 MB RAM for Mac version.
64-bit builds
64-bit nightly builds for Windows are available, but due to incompatibilities, including with popular plugins, official 64-bit releases are not provided.
The official releases of Firefox for OS X are universal builds that include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the browser in one package. A typical browsing session uses a combination of the 64-bit browser process and a 32-bit plugin process, because some popular plugins still are 32-bit.
For
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, vendor-backed, performance optimized, stable 64-bit builds exist (such as for
Novell-Suse LinuxSUSE Linux is a computer operating system. It is built on top of the open source Linux kernel and is distributed with system and application software from other open source projects. SUSE Linux is of German origin and mainly developed in Europe. The first version appeared in early 1994, making...
,
Red Hat LinuxRed Hat Linux, assembled by the company Red Hat, was a popular Linux based operating system until its discontinuation in 2004.Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994...
, and
UbuntuUbuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
), in addition to the nightly builds.
Older operating systems
Firefox 1.5.0.12 is the last version to work on
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
and Firefox 2.0.0.20 is the last version to work on
Windows 98Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
,
Windows MeWindows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006....
, and
Windows NT 4.0Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...
. Although not officially supported, a utility called KernelEx can run Firefox 3.x versions on
Windows 98Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
and
Windows MeWindows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006....
. These versions/lines are no longer supported by Mozilla.
Firefox 2.0.0.14 is the last version to work on
OS/2OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
Warp 3. Later Firefox versions requires a libc 0.6.3 based version of the GCC runtime library. libc 0.6.2 and later require Warp 4.
Firefox 3.5.9 is the last version to work on
HP-UXHP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...
11i, as packaged by
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
.
Firefox 3.6.24 is the latest version to work on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), as well as PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X 10.5. Officially released versions numbered 4.0 and higher do not work (although some unofficial builds based upon the newer versions do work, requiring varying degrees of patches), but future 3.6.x releases will work.
Unofficial ports
Ports have been developed for other platforms, including . The port is no longer being actively developed.
Licensing
Firefox
source codeIn computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
is
free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
. Most of it is tri-licensed under the
Mozilla Public LicenseThe Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
(MPL), the
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL) and the
GNU Lesser General Public LicenseThe GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
(LGPL). These licenses permit anyone to view, modify, and/or redistribute the source code, and several publicly released applications have been built on it; for example,
NetscapeNetscape 7 was a series of proprietary cross-platform Internet suites created by Netscape Communications Corporation and then in-house by AOL to continue the Netscape series after Netscape 6. There were three main editions released from the Netscape 7 series; being Netscape 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2...
,
FlockFlock was a web browser that specialized in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface.Earlier versions of Flock used the Gecko HTML rendering engine by Mozilla....
, Miro, Iceweasel, and
SongbirdSongbird is a free and open source software audio player and web browser, with a stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web."...
make use of code from Firefox.
In the past, Firefox was licensed solely under the MPL, which the FSF (Free Software Foundation) criticizes for being weak copyleft; the license permits, in limited ways, proprietary
derivative workIn United States copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work .-Definition:...
s. Additionally, code only licensed under the MPL cannot legally be linked with code under the GPL . To address these concerns, Mozilla re-licensed most of Firefox under the tri-license scheme of MPL, GPL, or LGPL. Since the re-licensing, developers have been free to choose the license under which they will receive most of the code, to suit their intended use: GPL or LGPL linking and derivative works when one of those licenses is chosen, or MPL use (including the possibility of proprietary derivative works) if they choose the MPL.
Trademark and logo
The name "Mozilla Firefox" is a registered
trademarkA trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
; along with the official Firefox logo, it may only be used under certain terms and conditions. Anyone may redistribute the official binaries in unmodified form and use the Firefox name and branding for such distribution, but restrictions are placed on distributions which modify the underlying source code.
Mozilla not only forbids creating derivative works from the Firefox logo (i.e. modifying it), but also strongly discourages creating independent but similar logos.
There has been some controversy over the Mozilla Foundation's intentions in stopping certain open source distributions from using the "Firefox" trademark. Former Mozilla CEO
Mitchell BakerWinifred Mitchell Baker, better known simply as Mitchell Baker is the Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation and Chairperson and former Chief Executive Officer of the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet...
explained in an interview in 2007 that distributions could freely use the Firefox trademark if they did not modify source-code, and that the Mozilla Foundation's only concern was with users getting a consistent experience when they used "Firefox".
To allow distributions of the code without using the official branding, the Firefox
source codeIn computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
contains a "branding switch". This switch allows the code to be compiled without the official logo and name, for example to produce a derivative work unencumbered by restrictions on the Firefox trademark (this is also often used for alphas of future Firefox versions). In the unbranded compilation the trademarked logo and name are replaced with a freely distributable generic globe logo and the name of the release series from which the modified version was derived. The name "Deer Park" is used for derivatives of Firefox 1.5, "Bon Echo" for derivatives of Firefox 2.0, "Gran Paradiso" for derivatives of Firefox 3.0 and "Shiretoko" is used for derivatives of Firefox 3.5. Derivatives of Firefox 3.6 are referred to as "Namoroka". The codename Minefield and a modified version of the generic logo stylized to look like a bomb is used for unofficial builds of version 3.0 and later, and for nightly builds of the trunk.
Distributing modified versions of Firefox under the "Firefox" name requires explicit approval from Mozilla for the changes made to the underlying code, and requires the use of all of the official branding. For example, it is not permissible to use the name "Firefox" without also using the official logo. When the
DebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
project decided to stop using the official Firefox logo in 2006 (because of copyright restrictions on its use incompatible with the project's
guidelinesThe Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian...
), they were told by a representative of the Mozilla Foundation that this was not acceptable, and were asked either to comply with the published trademark guidelines or cease using the "Firefox" name in their distribution. Ultimately, Debian switched to branding their modified version of Firefox "Iceweasel", along with other Mozilla software.
Advertising
The rapid adoption of Firefox, 100 million downloads in its first year of availability, followed a series of aggressive marketing campaigns starting in 2004 with a series of events
Blake RossBlake Aaron Ross is an American software developer who is known for his work on the Mozilla web browser; in particular, he started the Mozilla Firefox project with Dave Hyatt, as well as the Spread Firefox project with Asa Dotzler while working as a contractor at the Mozilla Foundation...
and
Asa DotzlerAsa Dotzler is an American software developer best known for his work as community coordinator for several Mozilla projects. He was founder of Mozilla's Quality Assurance and Testing Program, which grew under his leadership from just a few contributors when Dotzler joined the project to tens of...
called "marketing weeks".
On September 12, 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. A two-page ad in the December 16th edition of the New York Times, placed by Mozilla Foundation in coordination with Spread Firefox, featured the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation's fundraising campaign to support the launch of the Firefox 1.0 web browser. SFX 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. As a part of the Spread Firefox campaign, there was an attempt to break the world download record with the release of Firefox 3.
The "World Firefox Day" campaign started on July 15, 2006, the third anniversary of the founding of the
Mozilla FoundationThe Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
, 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.
On February 21, 2008 in honor of reaching 500 million downloads, the Firefox community celebrated by visiting
FreeRiceFreerice is a website where users play various educational, multiple-choice games in order to fight world hunger. For every question the user answers correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated...
to earn 500 million grains of rice.
Some of Firefox's contributors made a
crop circleA crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape. While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented...
of the Firefox logo in an
oatThe common oat is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name . While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed...
field near
AmityAmity is a city in Yamhill County, Oregon, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 1,614.-History:The town was established between 1848 and 1849 by Joseph and Ahio S. Watt, two brothers who had immigrated to Oregon over the Oregon Trail. Part of Joseph’s land claim became the...
, Oregon, near the intersection of Lafayette Highway and Walnut Hill Road.
Market adoption
, Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 30% of worldwide
usage share of web browsersThe usage share of a web browser is the proportion, often expressed as a percentage, of users of all web browsers who use that particular browser. This figure can only be estimated, typically by determining the proportion of visitors to a group of websites that use a particular web browser...
.
Downloads have continued at an increasing rate since Firefox 1.0 was released in November 2004, and as of July 31, 2009 Firefox has been downloaded over one billion times. This number does not include downloads using software updates or those from third-party websites. They do not represent a user count, as one download may be installed on many machines, one person may download the software multiple times, or the software may be obtained from a third party. According to Mozilla, Firefox had more than 400 million users .
In July 2010, all
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
employees (about 400,000) were asked to use Firefox as their default browser.
Reception
ForbesForbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
.com called Firefox the best browser in a 2004 commentary piece, and
PC WorldPC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
named Firefox "Product of the Year" in 2005 on their "100 Best Products of 2005" list. After the release of Firefox 2 and
Internet Explorer 7Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
in 2006, PC World reviewed both and declared that Firefox was the better browser.
Which?Which? is a product-testing and consumer campaigning charity with a magazine, website and various other services run by Which? Ltd ....
Magazine named Firefox its "Best Buy" web browser. In 2008,
CNETCNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
compared
SafariSafari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...
,
ChromeGoogle Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
, Firefox, and Internet Explorer in their "Battle of the Browsers" in terms of performance, security, and features, where Firefox was selected as a favorite.
Performance
In December 2005, Internet Week ran an article in which many readers reported high memory usage in Firefox 1.5. Mozilla developers said that the higher memory use of Firefox 1.5 was at least partially due to the new fast backwards-and-forwards (FastBack) feature. Other known causes of memory problems were malfunctioning extensions such as
Google ToolbarGoogle Toolbar is an Internet browser toolbar only available for Internet Explorer and Firefox .-Google Toolbar 1.0 December 11, 2000:New features:*Direct access to the Google search functionality from any web page*Web Site search...
and some older versions of
AdblockAdblock Plus is a content-filtering extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed.-How it works:Like Mozilla's built-in image blocker, Adblock...
, or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. When PC Magazine compared memory usage of Firefox 2,
Opera 9Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...
, and Internet Explorer 7, they found that Firefox used approximately as much memory as the other two browsers.
SoftpediaSoftpedia is an Internet web site that indexes information and provides software downloads. The site also covers major technology, science, health, and entertainment news from both external and in-house sources and provides software and game reviews. , it is one of the top 500 websites according to...
noted that Firefox 1.5 took longer to start up than other browsers, which was confirmed by further speed tests.
IE 6 launched more swiftly than Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP since many of its components were built into the OS and loaded during system startup. As a workaround for the issue, a preloader application was created that loaded components of Firefox on startup, similar to Internet Explorer. A Windows Vista feature called SuperFetch performs a similar task of preloading Firefox if it is used often enough.
Tests performed by
PC WorldPC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
and Zimbra in 2006 indicated that Firefox 2 used less memory than Internet Explorer 7. Firefox 3 used less memory than Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.50 Beta, Safari 3.1 Beta, and Firefox 2 in tests performed by Mozilla, CyberNet, and The Browser World. In mid 2009, Betanews benchmarked Firefox 3.5 and declared that it performed "nearly ten times better on XP than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7".
In January 2010, Lifehacker compared the performance of Firefox 3.5, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4 (stable and Dev versions), Safari 4, and Opera (10.1 stable and 10.5 pre-alpha versions). Lifehacker timed how long browsers took to start and reach a page (both right after boot-up and after running at least once already), timed how long browsers took to load nine tabs at once, tested JavaScript speeds using Mozilla's Dromaeo online suite (which implements Apple's SunSpider and Google's V8 tests) and measured memory usage using Windows 7's process manager. They concluded that Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 were the fifth and sixth fastest browsers respectively on startup, 3.5 was third and 3.6 was sixth fastest to load nine tabs at once, 3.5 was sixth and 3.6 was fifth fastest on the JavaScript tests. They also concluded that Firefox 3.6 was the most efficient with memory usage followed by Firefox 3.5.
Relationship with Google
The Mozilla Corporation's relationship with
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
has been noted in the popular press, especially with regard to their paid referral agreement. The release of the anti-
phishingPhishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
protection in Firefox 2 in particular raised considerable controversy: anti-phishing protection enabled by default is based on a list updated by twice-hourly downloads to the user's computer from Google's server. The user cannot change the data provider within the GUI, and is not informed who the default data provider is. The browser also sends Google's
cookieA cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...
with each update request. Some
internet privacyInternet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, providing to third-parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Privacy can entail both Personally Identifying Information or non-PII information such as a...
advocacy groups have expressed concerns surrounding Google's possible uses of this data, especially that Firefox's privacy policy states that Google may share information (that is not personally identifying) gathered with "safebrowsing" service with third parties, including business partners. Following Google CEO
Eric SchmidtEric Emerson Schmidt is an American software engineer and the current executive chairman of Google. From 2001 to 2011, he served as the chief executive officer of Google....
's comments in December 2009 regarding privacy during a
CNBCCNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
show,
Asa DotzlerAsa Dotzler is an American software developer best known for his work as community coordinator for several Mozilla projects. He was founder of Mozilla's Quality Assurance and Testing Program, which grew under his leadership from just a few contributors when Dotzler joined the project to tens of...
, Mozilla's director of community development suggested that users use the
BingBing is a web search engine from Microsoft.Bing may also refer to:* An onomatopœia of a bell sound* Bing cherry, a variety of cherry* Bing , Chinese flatbread* Bing , a German company that manufactured toys and kitchen utensils...
search engine instead of Google search. Google also promoted Firefox through
YouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
until the release of Google Chrome. In August 2009, Mozilla Security assisted Google by pointing out a security flaw in Google's Chrome browser. , Firefox's default search provider is Google.
In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of
US$The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
52.9 million, with approximately 95% derived from search engine royalties. In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$66.9 million, with approximately 90% derived from search engine royalties.
In 2007, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$81 million, with 88% of this sum (US$66 million) from Google.
In 2008, both Mozilla organizations had a combined revenue of US$78.6 million, with 91% coming from Google.
The Mozilla Foundation and Corporation are being audited by the
IRSThe Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
with the possibility of having its non-profit status called into question.
Response from Microsoft
Microsoft's head of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, stated in late 2004 that he did not see Firefox as a threat and that there was not significant demand for the feature-set of Firefox among Microsoft's users. Microsoft Chairman
Bill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
has used Firefox, but has commented that "it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better".
A Microsoft SEC filing on June 30, 2005 acknowledged that "competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products." The release of Internet Explorer 7 was fast tracked, and included functionality that was previously available in Firefox and other browsers, such as tabbed browsing and RSS feeds.
Despite the cold reception from Microsoft's top management, the Internet Explorer development team maintains a relationship with Mozilla. They meet regularly to discuss web standards such as extended validation certificates. In 2005, Mozilla agreed to allow Microsoft to use its
Web feedA web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator...
logo in the interest of common graphical representation of the Web feeds feature.
In August 2006, Microsoft offered to help Mozilla integrate Firefox with the then-forthcoming Windows Vista, an offer Mozilla accepted.
In October 2006, as congratulations for a successful ship of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team sent a cake to Mozilla. As a nod to the
browser warsBrowser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during...
, some jokingly suggested that Mozilla send a cake back along with the recipe, in reference to the open-source software movement. The IE development team sent another cake on June 17, 2008, upon the successful release of Firefox 3, again on March 22, 2011, for Firefox 4, and yet again for the Firefox 5 release.
In November 2007, Jeff Jones (a "security strategy director" in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group) criticized Firefox, claiming that Internet Explorer experienced fewer
vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
and fewer higher severity vulnerabilities than Firefox in typical enterprise scenarios.
Mozilla developer
Mike ShaverMike Shaver is currently the Engineering Director at Facebook. He is known for his work on several other open source projects as well...
discounted the study, citing Microsoft's bundling of security fixes and the study's focus on fixes, rather than vulnerabilities, as crucial flaws.
Firefox was one of the twelve browsers offered to
European Economic AreaThe European Economic Area was established on 1 January 1994 following an agreement between the member states of the European Free Trade Association and the European Community, later the European Union . Specifically, it allows Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to participate in the EU's Internal...
users of
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
in 2010 – see
BrowserChoice.euBrowserChoice.eu is a website that was created in March 2010 as the result of the European Union Microsoft competition case which involved legal proceedings by the EU against Microsoft that found that, via market dominance of the operating system market with Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer's...
.
.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
In February 2009, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for version 3.5 of the .NET Framework. This update also installed Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant add-on (enabling
ClickOnceClickOnce is a Microsoft technology that enables the user to install and run a Windows application by clicking a link in a web page. ClickOnce is a component of Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and later, supports deploying applications made with Windows Forms or Windows Presentation Foundation...
support). The update received media attention after users discovered that the add-on could not be uninstalled through the add-ons interface. Several hours after the website Annoyances.org posted an article regarding this update, Microsoft employee Brad Abrams posted in his blog Microsoft's explanation for why the add-on was installed, and also included detailed instructions on how to remove it. However, the only way to get rid of this extension was to modify manually the
Windows RegistryThe Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options on Microsoft Windows operating systems. It contains settings for low-level operating system components as well as the applications running on the platform: the kernel, device drivers, services, SAM, user...
, which could cause Windows systems to fail to boot up if not done correctly.
On 16 October 2009, Mozilla blocked all versions of Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant from being used with Firefox and from the
Mozilla Add-onsMozilla Add-ons is the official Mozilla Foundation website to act as a repository for add-ons for Mozilla software, including Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Mozilla Sunbird. These add-ons include extensions, themes, dictionaries, search bar "search engines," and plugins...
service. Two days later, the add-on was removed from the blocklist after confirmation from Microsoft that it is not a vector for
vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
. Version 1.1 (released on June 10, 2009 to the Mozilla Add-ons service) and later of the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant allows the user to disable and uninstall in the normal fashion.
Vulnerability statistics
Firefox security
vulnerabilitiesIn computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
have been patched relatively quickly.
SymantecSymantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
's
Internet Security Threat Report Vol. 10, based on data from the first half of 2006, reported that while Firefox had more public vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer during that time period (47 vs. 38), Firefox's vulnerabilities were fixed on average one day after the exploit code was made available, as compared to nine days for Internet Explorer.
InfoWorldInfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
has cited security experts saying that as Firefox becomes more popular, more vulnerabilities will be found, a claim that
Mitchell BakerWinifred Mitchell Baker, better known simply as Mitchell Baker is the Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation and Chairperson and former Chief Executive Officer of the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet...
, president of the Mozilla Foundation, has denied: "There is this idea that market share alone will make you have more vulnerabilities. It is not relational at all."
Expert and media coverage
The
United States Computer Emergency Readiness TeamThe United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team is part of the National Cyber Security Division of the United States' Department of Homeland Security....
(US-CERT) stated in October 2004 that Internet Explorer's design makes it very difficult to secure. In contrast, almost none of their concerns apply to Firefox.
There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, local file system (Local Machine Zone) trust, the Dynamic HTML (DHTML) document object model (in particular, proprietary DHTML features), the HTML Help system, MIME type determination, the graphical user interface (GUI), and ActiveX... IE is integrated into Windows to such an extent that vulnerabilities in IE frequently provide an attacker significant access to the operating system.
Some security experts, including
Bruce SchneierBruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of BT Managed Security Solutions, formerly Counterpane Internet...
and
David A. WheelerDavid A. Wheeler is a computer scientist. He is best known for his work on Open source software/Free-libre software and Computer security.-Open Source Software:...
, recommended that users should stop using Internet Explorer 6 or earlier for normal browsing, and switch to a different browser instead; Wheeler specifically recommended Firefox.
Several technology columnists have suggested the same, including
Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
columnist
Walter S. MossbergWalter S. Mossberg is an American journalist who is the principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal.-Early life:...
,
Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
columnist Rob Pegoraro,
USA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
’s Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz,
ForbesForbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
s
Arik HesseldahlArik Hesseldahl is an American journalist currently working as a senior editor for All Things Digital. He writes the column entitled NewEnterprise, which focuses on corporate information technology. He joined the site in December, 2010....
, eWeek.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, and Desktop Pipeline’s Scot Finnie.
Awards
Firefox has been given a number of awards by various organizations. These awards include:
- PC Magazine Editors' Choice, June 2008
- CNET Editors' Choice, June 2008
- PC World 100 Best Products of 2008, May 2008
- Webware 100 winner, April 2008
- Webware 100 winner, June 2007
- PC World 100 Best Products of 2007, May 2007
- PC Magazine Editors' Choice, October 2006
- CNET Editors' Choice, October 2006
- PC World's 100 Best Products of 2006, July 2006
- PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award, Software and Development Tools category, January 2006
- PC Magazine Best of the Year Award, December 27, 2005
- PC Pro Real World Award (Mozilla Foundation), December 8, 2005
- CNET Editors' Choice, November 2005
- UK Usability Professionals' Association Award Best Software Application 2005, November 2005
- Macworld Editor's Choice with a 4.5 Mice Rating, November 2005
- Softpedia User’s Choice Award, September 2005
- TUX 2005 Readers' Choice Award, September 2005
- PC World Product of the Year, June 2005
- Forbes Best of the Web, May 2005
- PC Magazine Editor’s Choice Award, May 2005
See also
- The Book of Mozilla
The Book of Mozilla is a computer Easter egg found in the Netscape and Mozilla series of web browsers.It is viewed by directing the browser to about:mozilla.There is no real book entitled The Book of Mozilla...
- List of web browsers
- Month of bugs
Month of Bugs is an increasingly popular strategy used by security researchers to draw attention to the lax security procedures of commercial software corporations. The tenet is these corporations have shown themselves to be unresponsive and uncooperative to security alerts and that "responsible...
- Mozilla Prism
Mozilla Prism is a product which integrates web applications with the desktop, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser. As of November 2010, Prism is listed as an inactive project at the Mozilla labs website.Prism is based...
- Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
- Timeline of web browsers
- XULRunner
XULRunner is a runtime environment developed by the Mozilla Foundation to provide a common back-end for XUL-based applications. It replaced the Gecko Runtime Environment, a stalled project with a similar purpose....
External links
for end-users