WikiPortallus: Mozilla Firefox.html

To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements some current web standards plus a few features which are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.

History

Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser.⁹ To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.¹⁰

The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project.¹¹¹²¹³ In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. Continuing pressure from the database server's development community forced another change; on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox,¹⁴ often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla prefers Firefox to be abbreviated as Fx or fx, though it is often abbreviated as FF.¹⁵

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. On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes updates to the tabbed browsing environment, the extensions manager, the GUI, and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by Google as an extension,¹⁶¹⁷ and later merged into the program itself.¹⁸ In December 2007, Firefox Live Chat was launched. It allows users to ask volunteers questions through a system powered by Jive Software, with guaranteed hours of operation and the possibility of help after hours.¹⁹

Version 3.0

Mozilla Firefox 3 was released on June 16, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Mozilla Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. The new version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web APIs.²⁰ Other new features include a redesigned download manager, a new "Places" system for storing bookmarks and history, and separate themes for different operating systems.

Development stretches back to the first Firefox 3 beta (under the codename 'Gran Paradiso'²¹) which had been released several months earlier on 19 November 2007,²² and was followed by several more beta releases in spring 2008 culminating in the June release.²³

Future developments

The precursory releases of upcoming Firefox releases are codenamed "Minefield", as this is the name of the trunk builds. Development for the 3.1 releases takes place on the Mozilla trunk (mozilla-central), and pre-release versions are available based on the Mozilla 1.9.1 branch.

Version 3.1

Version 3.1, codenamed Shiretoko,²⁵ is planned to include support for the <video> and <audio> tags as defined in the HTML 5 specification. Cross-site XMLHttpRequests (XHR), which would allow for more powerful web applications and an easier way to implement mashups, is also in planning. Native JSON DOM binding, a powerful feature for web developers, may also be included, together with full CSS 3 selector support.²⁶²⁷ Firefox 3.1 will use the Gecko 1.9.1 engine, which includes a few features that were not included in the 3.0 release.

Version 3.1 Alpha 1 was released in late July 2008.²⁸ Version 3.1 Alpha 2 was launched on September 6, 2008, adding new video support. TraceMonkey was added to enhance the speed of some JavaScript computations, similar to the V8 JavaScript engine in Google Chrome. Firefox 3.1 beta 1 was released on October 14, 2008,²⁹ and a second beta is expected in December.³⁰ Beta 2 will include a Private Browsing feature which, when active, does not store any data to the user's hard drive. www.nabble.com/td19795466.html reported that Firefox 3.1 was scheduled to be released in March 2009.

Version 4.0

On October 13, 2006, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer, wrote about the plans for Mozilla 2, the platform on which Firefox 4.0 is likely to be based. These changes include improving and removing XPCOM APIs, switching to standard C++ features, just-in-time compilation with JavaScript 2 (known as the Tamarin project), and tool-time and runtime security checks.³¹³² It has also been announced that support for the Gopher protocol will be removed by default to lessen attack vectors, but it has also been suggested that the protocol could be retained if someone was to implement Gopher support in a memory-safe programming language.³³

Future features

Open-source, in-browser video playback is intended to be included in Firefox, according to Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's former Chief Executive Officer. The goal is to do video playback without being encumbered by patent issues that are associated with so many video technologies.³⁴

Baker also discussed the Mozilla Foundation's project to create a version of Firefox, codenamed Fennec, that will run reliably on mobile phones, as well as a strategy for syncing content downloaded on a PC with mobile handsets.³⁴³⁵

Meanwhile, offline application support technology — similar to Gears — is also being built as part of Firefox. Baker said in an interview that given so much investment has now been made in the web as a platform, in order to take it to the next step, applications must continue to work when a computer's internet connection is offline.³⁴

Release history

Features

The developers of Firefox aimed to produce a browser that "just surfs the web"⁴⁸ and delivers the "best possible browsing experience to the widest possible set of people."⁴⁹

Users can customize Firefox with extensions and themes. Mozilla maintains an add-on repository at addons.mozilla.org with nearly 6000 add-ons in it as of September 2008.⁵

Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as Firebug.

Standards

Firefox passes the Acid2 standards-compliance test from version 3.0.⁵⁶ Like all other stable browsers as of August 2008, Firefox 3.0 does not pass the Acid3 test; it scores 71/100 and does not render the image correctly.

Security

Firefox uses a sandbox security model,⁵⁷ and limits scripts from accessing data from other web sites based on the same origin policy.⁵⁸ It uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the https protocol.⁵⁹ It also provides support for web applications to use smartcards for authentication purposes.⁶⁰

The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox.⁶¹ Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.⁶²

Because Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see Comparison of web browsers), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.⁶³^{dead link}⁶⁴⁶⁵⁶⁶ The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.⁶⁷

A 2006 Symantec 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.⁶⁸ Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, as counted by security researchers.⁶⁹ As of Nov 15, 2008, Firefox 3 has one security vulnerability unpatched according to Secunia.⁷⁰ Internet Explorer 7 has nine security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "moderately critical" by Secunia.⁷¹

Licensing

The official end-user builds of Firefox distributed from mozilla.com are licensed under the Mozilla End User License Agreement (EULA).⁷² Several elements do not fall under the scope of the tri-license and have their use restricted by the EULA, including the trademarked Firefox name, the proprietary artwork, and the proprietary closed-source Talkback crash reporter in Firefox version prior to 3. Because of this and the clickwrap agreement included in the Windows version, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) consider these builds proprietary software.⁷³ However, BreakPad, an open source crash reporting system, has replaced Talkback in Firefox 3.0.⁷⁴

In the past, Firefox was licensed solely under the MPL,⁷⁵ which the FSF criticizes for being weak copyleft; the license permits, in limited ways, proprietary derivative works. Additionally, code under the MPL cannot legally be linked with code under the GPL or the LGPL.⁷⁶⁷⁷ To address these concerns, Mozilla re-licensed Firefox under the tri-license scheme of MPL, GPL, and LGPL. Since the re-licensing, developers have been free to choose the license under which they will receive 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.⁷⁵

Trademark and logo issues

The name "Mozilla Firefox" is a registered trademark; 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.⁷⁸

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 Baker 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".⁷⁹

To allow distributions of the code without using the official branding, the Firefox source code 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 betas and 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, and "Gran Paradiso" is used for derivatives of Firefox 3.0. 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.

Outside of certain exceptions made for "community editions", 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 Debian project decided to stop using the official Firefox logo in 2006 (because of copyright restrictions on its use incompatible with the project's guidelines), 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.⁸⁰ 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,⁸¹ followed a series of aggressive marketing campaigns starting in 2004 with a series of events Blake Ross and Asa Dotzler called "marketing weeks".⁸²

On September 12, 2004,⁸³ a marketing portal dubbed "Spread Firefox" (SFX) debuted along with the Firefox Preview Release, creating a centralized space for the discussion of various marketing techniques. The portal enhanced the "Get Firefox" button program, giving users "referrer points" as an incentive. The site lists the top 250 referrers. From time to time, the SFX team or SFX members launch marketing events organized at the Spread Firefox website. As a part of the Spread Firefox campaign, there is an attempt to break the world download record with the release of Firefox 3. The idea is to have the newest version downloaded by as many people as possible within a 24 hour time period.⁸⁴

The "World Firefox Day" campaign started on July 15, 2006,⁸⁵^{dead link} the third anniversary of the founding of the Mozilla Foundation,⁸⁶ and ran until September 15, 2006.⁸⁷ 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 FreeRice to earn 500 million grains of rice.⁸⁸

Market adoption

Mozilla Firefox's market share has grown for each growth period since inception, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer; Internet Explorer has seen a steady decline of its usage share since Firefox's release. By early 2008, Firefox had approximately 15% global usage share of web browsers.⁹³⁹⁴ Market shares break down as following: 43% for Internet Explorer 7, 32% for Internet Explorer 6, 16% for Firefox 2.0, 4% for Safari 3.0, and less than half a percent for both Firefox 1.x and Internet Explorer 5.x versions.⁹⁵⁹⁶⁹⁷⁹⁸

Downloads have continued at an increasing rate since Firefox 1.0 was released in November 2004, and as of February 21, 2008 Firefox has been downloaded over 500 million times.⁹⁹ This number does not include downloads using software updates or those from third-party websites.¹⁰⁰ 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 CEO John Lilly, Firefox had about 140 million users as of February 2008.¹⁰¹

Critical reaction

Forbes.com called Firefox the best browser in a 2004 commentary piece,¹⁰² and PC World named Firefox "Product of the Year" in 2005 on their "100 Best Products of 2005" list.¹⁰³ After the release of Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, PC World reviewed both and declared that Firefox was the better browser.¹⁰⁴ Which? Magazine named Firefox its "Best Buy" web browser.¹⁰⁵ In 2008, CNET.com compared Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer in their "Battle of the Browsers" in terms of performance, security, and features, where Firefox won top honors.[3]

Performance

In December 2005 Internet Week ran an article in which many readers reported high memory usage in Firefox 1.5.¹⁰⁶ 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.¹⁰⁷ Other known causes of memory problems were malfunctioning extensions such as Google Toolbar and some older versions of Adblock,¹⁰⁸ or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader.¹⁰⁹ When PC Magazine compared memory usage of Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, they found that Firefox used approximately as much memory as the other two browsers.¹¹⁰

Softpedia also noted that Firefox 1.5 took longer to start up than other browsers,¹¹¹ which was confirmed by browser speed tests. IE 6 launches faster than Firefox 1.5 on Microsoft Windows since many of its components are built into Windows and are loaded during system startup. As a workaround for the issue, a preloader application was created that loads components of Firefox on startup, similar to Internet Explorer.¹¹² A Windows Vista feature called SuperFetch performs a similar task of preloading Firefox if it is used often enough.

Tests performed by PC World and Zimbra indicate that Firefox 2 uses less memory than Internet Explorer 7.¹⁰⁴¹¹³ Firefox 3 uses less memory than Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, and Firefox 2 in tests performed by Mozilla, CyberNet, and The Browser World.¹¹⁴¹¹⁵¹¹⁶

Relationship with Google

The Mozilla Corporation's relationship with Google has been noted in the media,¹¹⁷¹¹⁸ especially with regard to their paid referral agreement. The release of the anti-phishing protection in Firefox 2 in particular raised considerable controversy:¹¹⁹ 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.¹²⁰ The user cannot change the data provider within the GUI,¹²¹ and is not informed who the default data provider is. The browser also sends Google's cookie with each update request.¹²² An additional, explicitly opt-in security feature has been added to recent builds by the Mozilla Foundation. This anti-phishing feature provides live protection by checking each visited URL with Google.¹²³ Some Internet privacy advocacy groups have expressed concerns surrounding Google's possible uses of this data, though Firefox's privacy policy states that Google may not use personal information for any purposes other than the anti-phishing protection feature.¹²⁰

In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$52.9 million, with approximately 95 percent derived from search engine royalties.¹²⁴¹²⁵ In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$66.9 million, with approximately 90 percent derived from search engine royalties.¹²⁴¹²⁶

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.¹²⁷ Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but he has commented "so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?"¹²⁸

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."¹²⁹ 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.¹³⁰

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.¹³¹ In 2005 Mozilla agreed to allow Microsoft to use its Web feed logo in the interest of common graphical representation of the Web feeds feature.¹³²

In August 2006, Microsoft offered to help Mozilla integrate Firefox with the then-forthcoming Windows Vista,¹³³ which Mozilla accepted.¹³⁴

In October 2006, as congratulations for a successful ship of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team sent a cake to Mozilla.¹³⁵¹³⁶ As a nod to the browser wars, some readers joked about the cake being poisoned, while others jokingly suggested that Mozilla send a cake back along with the recipe, in reference to the open-source software movement.¹³⁷ The IE development team sent another cake on June 17, 2008, upon the successful release of Firefox 3.¹³⁸

In November 2007, Microsoft employee Jeff Jones criticized Firefox, claiming that Internet Explorer experienced fewer vulnerabilities and fewer higher severity vulnerabilities than Firefox in typical enterprise scenarios.¹³⁹ Mozilla developer Mike Shaver discounted the study, citing Microsoft's bundling of security fixes and the study's focus on fixes, rather than vulnerabilities, as crucial flaws.¹⁴⁰

Vulnerability statistics

Firefox security vulnerabilities have been patched relatively quickly. Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report Vol. 10, based on data from the first half of 2006, reported that while Firefox had more 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.

Some have speculated that as Firefox becomes more popular, more vulnerabilities will be found,¹⁴¹ a claim that Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation, has denied.¹⁴²

Expert and media coverage

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) stated that Internet Explorer's design makes it very difficult to secure. In contrast, almost none of their concerns apply to Firefox.¹⁴³

Some security experts, including Bruce Schneier¹⁴⁴ and David A. Wheeler,¹⁴⁵ recommended that users should stop using Internet Explorer for normal browsing, and switch to a different browser instead; Wheeler specifically recommended Firefox.

Several technology columnists have suggested the same, including Wall Street Journal columnist Walter S. Mossberg,¹⁴⁶ Washington Post columnist Rob Pegoraro,¹⁴⁷ USA Today’s Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz,¹⁴⁸ Forbes's Arik Hesseldahl,¹⁴⁹ eWEEK.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols,¹⁵⁰ and Desktop Pipeline’s Scot Finnie.¹⁵¹

Awards

Mozilla Firefox has been given a number of awards by various organizations. These awards include:

Mozilla Firefox.html

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