Firefox

Firefox redirects here. For other uses, see Firefox (disambiguation).

Mozilla Firefox (originally known as Phoenix and briefly as Mozilla Firebird) is a free cross-platform web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers. Before its 1.0 release on November 9, 2004, Firefox had already garnered a great deal of acclaim from numerous media outlets, including Forbes [1] and the Wall Street Journal [2]. With over 5 million downloads in the first 12 days of its release and 10 million in the first month of release, Firefox 1.0 is one of the most-used free, open source applications among home users. [3]

With Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation aims to develop a small, fast, simple, and highly extensible web browser (separate from the larger Mozilla Suite). Firefox has become the main focus of Mozilla development along with the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client, and it has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the official browser release of the Mozilla Foundation.

Among Firefox's popular features are the integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and an extension mechanism for adding functionality. Although these features have already been available for some time in other browsers such as the Mozilla Suite and Opera, Firefox is the first of these browsers to have achieved large-scale adoption. Firefox has been targeted to grab around 10% of the market share of Microsoft Internet Explorer (the most popular browser by a large margin, as of 2004) by 2005, creating a state of competition that many have heralded as the return of the browser wars. [4]

Firefox has attracted attention as an alternative to Internet Explorer since Explorer has come under fire for its alleged insecurity—detractors cite its disregard for Web standards, use of the often-dangerous ActiveX component, and vulnerability to spyware and malware installation—and its lack of many features that Firefox's proponents consider essential [5]. Microsoft, for its part, has responded that it doesn't feel issues with either security or features are a major concern. [6] However, it has released Windows XP Service Pack 2, which adds several important security features to Internet Explorer.

History and development

The Firefox project started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla browser project led by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross. They perceived the Mozilla browser project as being overly compromised by the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship, as well as developer-driven feature creep. The pared-down Phoenix browser (as it was then called) was created to combat the perceived software bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed and internally referred to as SeaMonkey), which integrated features such as IRC, mail and news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing in one suite of software. The current lead developer of Firefox is Ben Goodger.

Mozilla Firefox retains the cross-platform nature of the original Mozilla browser, using the XUL user interface language. Use of XUL makes it possible to extend the browser's capabilities through the use of themes (skins) and extensions. However, the development and installation processes of these add-ons raised security concerns, and with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla Foundation opened a Mozilla Update website containing "approved" themes and extensions. Use of XUL also sets Firefox apart from other projects based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine, such as Galeon, Epiphany, K-Meleon, Camino, and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms (Galeon and Epiphany use GTK; K-Meleon, Windows' MFC; and Camino employs the windowing faculties of Mac OS X). Many of these projects were started before Firefox, and probably served as inspiration.

The first sign of a Firefox-like project was Raptor, a small application sample (presumably to demonstrate how to embed Gecko in another application) shipped with early milestone builds of Mozilla. Featuring only "back", "forward", "stop" buttons and a URL field (no cache, no stored history, etc.), it was minimalistic and thus a lot lighter than Mozilla itself. Eventually, Raptor stopped shipping with Mozilla's binary builds.

Firefox was intended to replace the Mozilla Suite for end users. Although the Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and to replace it with Firefox, the Foundation continues to maintain the suite because it is used by many corporate users, and is bundled with other software. In an attempt to combat software bloat, the developers of the Mozilla Suite have stripped out several features and much of the interface. Further, many Mozilla Suite features (such as the IRC client) are now available as optional Firefox extensions.

The official discussion forum for Mozilla Firefox is hosted by MozillaZine, a weblog for Mozilla-related topics. MozillaZine is run by a group of individuals otherwise unaffiliated with the Mozilla Foundation.

On February 5, 2004 the business and IT consulting company AMS categorized Mozilla Firefox (then Firebird) as a "Tier 1" (meaning "Best of Breed") open source product (Keating, 2004). This meant that AMS considered Firebird to be virtually risk-free and technically strong.

Naming

The Firefox Logo (source)

The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite called "mozilla/browser". When sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name "Phoenix".

The "Phoenix" name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies. The new name, "Firebird", was met with a mixed reaction. In late April the Mozilla Foundation issued a statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as "Mozilla Firebird" (as opposed to just "Firebird") in order to avoid confusion with the Firebird database server. However, continuing pressure from the open source community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 Mozilla Firebird was renamed "Mozilla Firefox".

The name "Firefox" was chosen for its similarity to "Firebird", but also for its uniqueness in the computing industry. To ensure that no further name changes would be necessary, the Mozilla Foundation began the process of registering Firefox as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in December 2003. [7]

The repeated renaming of the program prompted the development of the tongue-in-cheek plug-in "Firesomething" [8], which allowed users to change the name of the browser. One feature randomly renamed the browser on startup, giving it such satirical soubriquets as "Firegiraffe" or "Moonbadger".

Branding and visual identity

One of the most visible enhancements is the new visual identity of Firefox and Thunderbird. Open source applications, typically designed by programmers rather than graphic designers or usability gurus, frequently suffer from poor icon and GUI design, and few have a strong visual identity. Firebird and Phoenix were considered to have had reasonable visual designs, but were not up to the same standard as many professionally released software packages.

In October 2003, professional interface designer Steven Garrity wrote a web page review of everything he considered to be wrong with Mozilla's visual identity. [9] The page received a great deal of attention and was even Slashdotted. Most of the criticisms levelled at the article were along the lines of "where is the patch?", an open-source way of saying "If you don't like it, fix it yourself."

Shortly afterwards, Garrity was invited by the Mozilla Foundation to head up the new visual identity team. The release of Firefox 0.8 in February 2004 saw the introduction of the new branding efforts, including new icons designed by Jon Hicks, who had previously worked on Camino. [10]

The animal shown in the logo is a stylised fox, although "firefox" was thought to be a common name for the red panda. The panda, according to Hicks, "didn't really conjure up the right imagery", besides not being widely known. [11]

Release history

Key:
Old Version	Current Version	Future Version

Browser Name	Version	Codename	Release date	Significant changes
Phoenix	0.1	Pescadero	September 23, 2002	First release. Customizable toolbar; quicksearch.
	0.2	Santa Cruz	October 1, 2002	Sidebar; Extension management.
	0.3	Lucia	October 14, 2002	Image blocking; Pop-up blocking whitelist; Tabbed browsing
	0.4	Oceano	October 19, 2002	Themes; Pop-up blocking improvements; Toolbar customization
	0.5	Naples	December 7, 2002	Multiple homepages; Sidebar and accessibility improvements; History
Firebird	0.6	Glendale	May 17, 2003	New Default Theme (Qute); Bookmark and privacy improvements; Smooth scrolling; Automatic image resizing
	0.6.1		July 28, 2003	Bugfix release
	0.7	Indio	October 15, 2003	Automatic scrolling; Password manager; Preferences panel improvements
	0.7.1	Three Kings	October 26, 2003	Bugfix release (Mac OS X only)
Firefox	0.8	Royal Oak	February 9, 2004	Windows installer; Offline working; Bookmarks and download manager improvements; Rebranded with new (current) logo
	0.9	One Tree Hill	June 15, 2004	New Default Theme (Winstripe); Comprehensive data migration; New extension/theme manager; Reduced download size; New help system; Linux installer; Mail Icon (Windows only)
	0.9.1		June 28, 2004	Bugfix release; updated default theme
	0.9.2		July 8, 2004	Vulnerability patch (Windows only)
	0.9.3		August 4, 2004	Vulnerability patch (All platforms)
	0.10 (1.0 PR)	Greenlane	September 14, 2004	("Preview Release") Bugs with higher complexity/risk, localization impact. Added RSS/Atom feed support, find toolbar, plugin finder.
	0.10.1		October 1, 2004	Vulnerability patch (All platforms)
	1.0 RC-1	Mission Bay	October 27, 2004	First release candidate
	1.0 RC-2	Whangamata	November 3, 2004	Second release candidate
	1.0	Phoenix	November 9, 2004	Official Version 1.0 release
	Upcoming releases
	1.1	Deer Park	March 2005	Re-sync with Mozilla Trunk. Ongoing HIG compliance work for Aqua, GNOME etc.
	1.5	???	Mid 2005	First major half of Firefox 2.0 development
	2.0	???	Late 2005	Second major half of 2.0 development.

Three Kings, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill, Mission Bay and Greenlane are all suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand; Whangamata is a small seaside town in the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand. The codenames were chosen from these suburb names by Ben Goodger, who grew up in Auckland. The other codenames included in the Firefox roadmap are derived from an actual roadmap of a journey through California to Phoenix, Arizona. [12]

According to Ben Goodger, "Deer Park is not Deer Park, Victoria, but just a symbolic name. I was riding LIRR a few weeks ago and saw the name go by and I thought it sounded nice".

Future development

According to the roadmap, future Firefox development will be split over three milestones: version 1.1, version 1.5 and version 2.0. Development for these releases will take place on the Mozilla trunk.

Likely goals for Firefox include:

Bookmark and History improvements
Specific options per-site
Extension system enhancements
Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search enhancements
Accessibility compliance

The next planned release is Firefox 1.1, which is targeted for March 2005.

Delicious delicacies

File:Fxcookies2.png

A screenshot showing the "cookies are delicious delicacies" line

Early Firefox releases featured an options menu that described cookies in the following way: "Cookies are delicious delicacies."

The phrase was representative of the programmers' quirky sense of humour, and a general reflection of the open source movement's unconventional approach. The phrase became something of a cult legend, and was even featured in an O'Reilly computer book.

However, in a reflection of the growing acceptance and use of the Firefox browser in mainstream Internet use the text now reads, "Cookies are pieces of information stored by web pages on your computer. They are used to remember login information and other data." The revision was regarded as more likely to be helpful for the less technically oriented computer users who were now using Firefox, representing Mozilla's desire to appeal to mainstream users.

The original text was inserted by Blake Ross, one of the lead developers of Firefox. It was replaced by Mike Connor.

After this happened, the following remarks were made by Blake Ross over IRC:

<blake2> congratulations mconnor

<blake2> you just destroyed a legend!

On August 22, 2004, version 0.1 of the Delicious Delicacies extension was released by Jesse Ruderman. This extension restores the old description of cookies. As of December 8, 2004, this extension is in version 0.4.2. [13]

Features

File:Firefox1.JPG

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 features built in search tools for the web, your browsing history and the active page, as well as tabbed browsing support, among its diverse feature set.

Like Opera and the Mozilla Suite, Mozilla Firefox has some features that differentiate it from other browsers like Internet Explorer. However, it lacks many of the features found in browsers like Opera or the Mozilla Suite, in an effort to combat interface bloat and allow the browser to be customized from a smaller, pared-down browser to meet individual users' needs. Instead of providing all features in the standard distribution, Firefox relies on the extension system to allow users to modify the browser according to their needs.

Tabbed browsing

Firefox supports tabbed browsing, which allows users to open multiple pages in the same window. This feature was carried over from the Mozilla Suite, which had in turn implemented the feature due to wide usage of the MultiZilla extension for SeaMonkey. Until version 1.0, Firefox did not support automatic single-window mode, in which all links which would normally open in a new window were instead opened in a new tab. [14] This feature was introduced in 1.0 after complaints from users migrating from other browsers like Opera or Internet Explorer shells such as Avant Browser or Maxthon. However, there were a number of problems with the feature, and because of this it has been stored in a hidden preference as an experimental feature. Before 1.0, most users who preferred single window mode used extensions such as Tabbrowser Preferences or Tabbrowser Extensions to solve their quandary. [15] [16]

Firefox also permits the 'homepage' to be a set of pages, which are automatically opened in separate tabs, instead of only one page. This can be a mixed blessing, since clicking the home page opens another set of tabs, instead of resetting the current set (though the proper way to solve this isn't entirely clear), and since it is slightly more difficult to open a browser quickly for a single web page retrieval when this is necessary.

Pop-up blocking

Firefox also includes integrated customizable pop-up blocking. The blocking will block pop-ups from all web sites by default, but can be configured to allow individual sites to show pop-ups. It can also be turned off entirely to allow pop-ups from all sites. Firefox was given this feature early in development, long before Internet Explorer began including a pop-up blocker in the Windows XP "Service Pack 2" release. Firefox's pop-up blocking can be inconvenient at times, however — it blocks all JavaScript-based links from opening a new window while a page is loading unless a site is added to a "safe list" found in the options menu.

In many cases it is possible to view the pop-up's URL by clicking the dialogue that appears when one is blocked. This makes it easier to decide if the pop-up should be displayed.

Download manager

An integrated customizable download manager is also included. Downloads can be opened automatically depending on the file type, or saved to disk automatically. By default, Firefox downloads all files to a user's desktop on Windows or the user's home directory on Linux, but it can be configured to prompt for a specific download location. The download manager currently does not support cross-session resuming (stopping a download and resuming it after closing the browser). [17] Another issue with the download manager is that it fails to close if small files or files already in the cache are downloaded. [18]

When the download manager was first introduced around version 0.8, there was an uproar among users who preferred the old style of individual windows for downloads, akin to that used by Internet Explorer. [19] Initially there was a great demand for an extension to address the issue but this desire quickly diminished.

Live Bookmarks

Powered by RSS or Atom feeds, "Live Bookmarks", another feature of Firefox, allows users to check news sources via their bookmarks. When this feature was first introduced in version 1.0 PR, there were a few worries that Firefox was beginning to include non-essential features and that it was beginning to bloat the browser much like the Mozilla Suite. However, these worries diminished soon after.

Live Bookmarks have surprised many users [20] with their simplicity. Instead of treating RSS-feeds as HTML pages like most news readers do, they are treated as bookmarks that are updated in real-time with a link to an appropriate source.

Themes

Firefox also supports a variety of themes/skins for changing its appearance. Themes are coded using XUL. Many themes can be downloaded from the Mozilla Update web site. The default theme was the subject of mass debate when it was changed to a heavily-modified version of Pinstripe (a theme designed with Mac OS X in mind) circa version 0.9 due to licensing issues preventing the theme from being released under the Mozilla Public Licence. Beforehand, Firefox and its predecessors had used the Qute theme, designed by Arvid Axelsson. Axelsson was upset about being notified by Ben Goodger about the theme change only a few days before, and posted the transcript of his dialogue with Goodger on the MozillaZine forums, breaking the news of the theme change before it actually came out. [21] Although a great deal of people criticised the new theme when it was rolled out, eventually the tension subsided. Axelsson continues to produce Qute privately.

Extensions

An often-touted feature of Firefox is its extensibility. Extensions allow the addition of new features such as mouse gestures, advertisement blocking, debugger tools, and others. Many former Mozilla features such as IRC chat (ChatZilla), calendar, etc. have become extensions. Although several private sites have sprung up offering extensions for download, the Mozilla Foundation offers a variety of extensions for download on the Mozilla Update site. Most extensions are no more than a few kilobytes in size, making them easily accessible to anyone regardless of connection speed.

There has been some concern about the security of extensions, as if one downloads an extension designed with malicious intent, it may be used to gather information about the user, or worse, compromise the user's computer's security. The developers responded by letting users whitelist the sites they trust to download extensions from and by providing a preference to disable extension installation altogether. In addition, Firefox prevents users from clicking the button to install the extension for three seconds to ensure that users are not tricked into clicking it accidentally. Blogger Jesse Ruderman filed the bug report [22] that explained why the last measure is necessary, giving examples of how users could be manipulated into installing extensions without knowing it in versions without the three-second delay.

All themes and extensions downloaded from the Mozilla Update site [23] may be upgraded through the browser interface itself. This same feature also allows one to download updates to Firefox directly without having to browse to the Mozilla Foundation's website. By comparison, Microsoft's Windows Update will also automatically update Internet Explorer, but this is not integrated into the browser itself; it is a web page that uses an ActiveX control. Alternatively, Microsoft's Automatic Update component automatically updates Internet Explorer in the background but does not require human intervention or actively running Internet Explorer.

Preferences and privacy

Firefox's toolbars and interface are customisable; users can move and manipulate the various buttons, fields, and menus on the toolbars, and also add new toolbars or delete existing ones.

Firefox also can save users' usernames and passwords, making it convenient for them to login to the sites they frequent. However, this password manager comes with a caveat — passwords and usernames are not filled in on a page until the page has finished loading. [24] In addition, Firefox also may save information a user fills into forms — therefore, this makes filling in forms which require information that does not or infrequently changes such as one's name or address more convenient. Both the password manager and the saving of one's form information may be disabled.

Firefox offers a one-click system for deleting one's trail of activities on the web. Cookies, history, saved passwords, cache, saved form information, and download manager history can all be cleared with one button or individually.

Additionally, Firefox stores many hidden preferences that are accessed by typing about:config in the address bar. This is used to enable features like single-window mode and error-pages, or to speed up page rendering by various tweaks. Experimental features like HTTP pipelining are often hidden in the about:config menu.

Security

As of December 12, 2004, the security firm Secunia reports three security flaws not yet fixed for Mozilla Firefox, as opposed to 19 security flaws not yet fixed for Microsoft Internet Explorer. [25] [26] While Internet Explorer users who have installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 are not affected by all of these vulnerabilities, users of older versions of Windows are still in danger as Service Pack 2 is only available for Windows XP.

The count of pro-Firefox security reports and press articles took a notable upswing after the Download.ject attack on Internet Explorer on June 23, 2004. This was bolstered by numerous media reports on the subject around the same time that representative Art Manion of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) suggested that using a web browser other than Internet Explorer would mitigate security risks. On June 6, 2004, CERT Vulnerability Note (VU#713878) stated as one of seven solutions that switching to an alternate browser would avoid this vulnerability, and possibly others, stating that:

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. These technologies are implemented in operating system libraries that are used by IE and many other programs to provide web browser functionality. IE is integrated into Windows to such an extent that vulnerabilities in IE frequently provide an attacker significant access to the operating system. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when viewing untrusted HTML documents (e.g., web sites, HTML email messages). Such a decision may, however, reduce the functionality of sites that require IE-specific features such as proprietary DHTML, VBScript, and ActiveX. Note that using a different web browser will not remove IE from a Windows system, and other programs may invoke IE, the WebBrowser ActiveX control (WebOC), or the HTML rendering engine (MSHTML). [27]

Note that the vulnerability that originally caused the report has long since been fixed, and in the case of Windows XP, Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 in response to many of the other concerns regarding the GUI, ActiveX, DHTML, and trust zones.

On the whole, Firefox security vulnerabilities have been patched relatively quickly. Most occured during the beta phase of the project. One notable exception is the XUL spoofing vulnerability that was found in 1999, marked confidential in the Mozilla bugtracker until July 21, 2004, and fixed finally before the 1.0 release. [28]

Standards

The Mozilla Foundation takes pride in Firefox's compliance with W3C web standards. Firefox has extensive support for most basic web standards like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and MathML.

It also supports PNG images and variable transparency, something Internet Explorer does not do fully. Indeed, Firefox's support of PNG images has caused much debate around Internet Explorer's standards compliancy, as it is a standard that some web developers want to use instead of the old GIF format, which does not have the same capabilities.

Developers are constantly improving Firefox's support of the existing standards. Most of CSS2 and some of the not yet completed CSS3 standard has already been implemented in Firefox.

Work is being done on implementing newer standards like SVG, APNG and XForms natively into Firefox, as well as building on existing standards by proposing new recommendations like XUL and XBL that are already being used to build Firefox's user interface.

Other features

Firefox also has a "find as you type" automatic search feature. When a user types a word while on a web page, Firefox will automatically search for it in the page and highlight the first instance found.

There is also a built-in Mycroft web search function with extensible search engine listing; by default, Firefox includes plugins for searching with Google and Yahoo!, and also includes plugins for looking up a word on dictionary.com and browsing through Amazon.com listings. Other popular Mycroft search engines are Wikipedia, eBay, and IMDb. Mycroft Holmes is the older, smarter brother of Sherlock Holmes, after whom the Macintosh OS's build-in search system is named.

It should be noted that most of the aforementioned features are not unique to Firefox. Opera, for example, also supports many of these features, but lacks similar extensibility; it is also supported by advertisements — one must pay a fee to remove the advertisements. See also comparison of web browsers.

Criticisms

Many argue that frequently requested, yet minor, features have not been implemented. For example, the ability to resize the search bar has been a frequently requested feature but has been frequently turned down. Some of these requests have only been solved when someone creates an extension for it. However, it is commonly argued that the marginal performance degradation when installing an extension is not worth the marginal benefits of having that feature available. Therefore, they argue, that feature should have been included into Firefox by default to avoid the performance hit.[29]

Another complaint is that Firefox is sometimes slow to load pages when using the back and forward buttons. This is a result of issues with the coding in the Mozilla Suite, which was transferred over to Firefox (then Phoenix) when it branched.[30]

A third complaint that some have is that a small, but often frequently used, feature that allows pressing "Ctrl+Enter" in the address bar to open a page in a new tab is missing from Firefox. "Ctrl+Enter" has been replaced with auto completion in the URL bar as Internet Explorer does. "Alt+Enter" now provides the new tab functionality.

Additionally, there are many criticisms levelled by users of other browsers, elucidated below.

Criticisms from Internet Explorer users

When Firefox has problems loading a page, for example when it cannot connect to the server, it displays an error dialog box instead of an error page as used in Internet Explorer (this can be configured in about:config). [31]

A selection of users switching to Firefox have noted that it can take longer to launch than Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer's close ties to Windows code gives it the advantage of starting quickly once the program icon is clicked. Firefox can have a longer start time (although this is typically if the user has installed many extensions), but can be given the same advantage IE has by using the "/prefetch:1" switch. It should be noted that other users have reported that Firefox loads and renders web pages faster.

Another issue found by users coming from Internet Explorer is that the right-click context menu for images, the "View image" option, sounding similar to the "Show image" in Internet Explorer's context menu, loads the image in the current tab or window instead of reloading the image in the page as Internet Explorer would [32]. There is an extension known as "Show image", which duplicates the Internet Explorer behavior.[33] Many IE users choose to use an Internet Explorer shell to make their feature set similar to that of Firefox (but they keep most of the IE security vulnerabilities and still don't have a Web standards compliant browser) while maintaining the compatibility of Trident, Internet Explorer's rendering engine. [34]

One of the main unaddressed problems of Firefox is the position of the text cursor or caret when entering text into a box, much like the ones found on Internet forums (particularly phpBB boards). The text cursor is too wide and positioned slightly to the left of where it should be, completely obscuring letters like "i" and "j" and making it difficult to read what the user is typing. Although there are plans to include a fix for this in the next official release of Firefox, a few users have taken the already-existing fix and compiled new versions of Firefox. One example of a user-compiled Firefox which fixes this problem is the build by Amano. However, these user-compiled versions do not guarantee the same stability as official releases.

ActiveX

Firefox's strong ties to standards are causing much worry in the Mozilla community, as the developers' decision not to implement non-standard web technologies developed by Microsoft, such as ActiveX and certain JavaScript functions, has led to some users returning to Internet Explorer. This is largely due to some sites designing Internet Explorer-specific functionality by using these non-standard technologies. That said, it is possible to add support for ActiveX by the use of a plugin for Windows users.[35]

Some users find the hassle of having to open Internet Explorer at regular intervals when they find a site that does not work correctly in Firefox, and decide to use Internet Explorer by default instead of switching between the two. As a result, an extension was developed that adds a button to the right-click context menu that allows a user to view a page, or any link on a page, in Internet Explorer. [36] The new Netscape browser, based on Firefox, includes a feature similar to this, though it doesn't require a new window to open.

However, others view the lack of ActiveX as a blessing in disguise, as there have been numerous security holes discovered in it in the past. In addition, there are relatively few public websites that use ActiveX; the most well-known site to use ActiveX is probably the Windows Update site. ActiveX is not portable to the wide variety of browser platforms in any case; systems based on Mac, Linux, or BSD, as well as non-x86 systems, typically cannot run ActiveX controls anyway. Unfortunately ActiveX is quite common in corporate intranets and web applications which may hinder the adoption of Firefox on the corporate desktop.

Criticisms from Opera users

Opera users may be perturbed at the fact that Firefox does not have cross-session browsing — where the tabs that were open when the browser was closed remain when it is reopened by default. Most users either resort to the Tabbrowser Extensions extension or the Session Saver extension to resolve this. [37]

Some may also miss the possibility to undo the accidental closing of a tab by pressing CTRL+Z. Opera also offers a list of all closed tabs in a session, for quick restoration. Again, similar functionality is available for Firefox via extensions. [38] [39]

Opera's interface is customisable, allowing toolbars, buttons, fields, etc. to be placed anywhere on the screen (or not at all). Menus, keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures etc. may also be user-defined. Many of the possible configurations are not available in Firefox by default, but are supported by extensions.

Opera is often seen as most attractive for some features, all available without the installation of extensions. Firefox's philosophy is different, offering only core features by default to avoid possible bloat. Despite the Firefox team's efforts to offer as few things as possible, the executable size is still larger than that of Opera.

Criticisms from Mozilla Suite users

Some users of the Mozilla Suite point to Firefox's appeal to novice users as being a weakness rather than a strength of the browser. Many advanced configuration options available in the suite are hidden in Firefox, and can only be accessed by hand-editing configuration files or through the about:config interface.

In addition, many argue that it is superfluous to use Firefox combined with the stand-alone Mozilla Thunderbird email client, as the suite offers the same features in a unified package with less memory consumption. Firefox is based on older, stable builds of the Mozilla Suite, and as a consequence, it may not contain new bleeding-edge features found in the development version. However, Firefox's developers are planning that in the future, Firefox will periodically have its code 'refreshed' from the Mozilla trunk.

Many people have no problem using both the Suite and Firefox, using the former to keep track of new features and changes to the Gecko engine, and the latter as their default web browser.

Market adoption

The adoption of Firefox has been rapid, given the previously accepted dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the browser market. According to Mozilla's marketing site, Mozilla Firefox 1.0, launched on November 9, 2004 and available for free from the Firefox homepage, was downloaded over a million times within 24 hours after its 1.0 release. Within 11 days, it had achieved over 5 million downloads. As of December 12, 2004 (roughly one month after the launch of version 1.0), the number of download of Firefox 1.0 hit 10 million.

According to a September 2004 report in Tom's Hardware Guide, analysts Websidestory reported that 5.2 percent of web users were using the Firefox or Netscape browsers as of late September 2004, a rise of 1.7 percent since June, and that Internet Explorer had lost 1.8 percent of market share in the same period, down to 93.7 percent. [40] Firefox is now targeting a 10% market share by the end of 2005. [41] This goal received a boost when a web browser usage survey released on November 24 2004 showed that Firefox usage was now at 4.58 percent, while Internet Explorer's usage was down to 88.9 percent. [42] [43]

Because Firefox is one of the more popular open source applications, it has been referred to as a gateway drug or a Trojan Horse for the adoption of open source software. [44]

Much of Firefox's rapid adoption results from the recent spate of reports of security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, as users look for a safer alternative. Although Firefox has had security vulnerabilities of its own, most of them were during the beta phase of the project. On the whole they have been patched relatively quickly, with the exception of an isolated XUL spoofing vulnerability that was found in 1999 and fixed finally for the 1.0 release.[45] As the distribution of the final version increases, it remains to be seen how robust the browser is in the security field; several security bugs have been discovered since the 1.0 release.

Despite Firefox's apparent gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft head of Australian operations Steve Vamos has stated that Microsoft does not feel Firefox is a threat. He does not feel that Microsoft's users really want the added features of Firefox and says that he never used it personally.[46]

Despite Microsoft's stated views on Firefox, on 28th November 2004, the British MSN website, which is part of the Microsoft Corporation, began listing Mozilla Firefox in the downloads section as "The best browser around. Period." However, it should be noted that the blurbs for software on that website are taken from computeractive.co.uk, a download site that isn't part of Microsoft.[47]

Spread Firefox campaign

The rapid adoption was apparently accelerated by an active community-marketing campaign dubbed "Spread Firefox" [48]. The campaign encourages its users to add "Get Firefox" links to their website/e-mails, who are given "referrer points" as an incentive. The top 250 referrers are listed on the site [49]. There are also blogs and forums to discuss marketing techniques.

Another publicity idea was introduced by Firefox developer, Blake Ross, which encouraged the Firefox community to file comments on the feedback section of CNET's Download.com website. This allowed the Firefox product to rise to first place on CNET's most popular list of software. [50]

On October 19, 2004, a small announcement went up on the Spread Firefox homepage. It said the group was going to attempt to raise money to publish a full-page advertisement in the New York Times to announce the release of Firefox 1.0. The ad was to be a declaration of independence from Internet Explorer, and would include as signatures the names of all the contributors to the campaign. A goal was set to reach 2500 names. When the ten day fundraising period was over, it was announced that over 10,000 people had contributed, and raised a total of $250,000 USD, about five times as much as had been expected. The advertisement is expected to be published in early December 2004.

References

Goodger, Ben. (2004). Mozilla Firefox Development Charter. Retrieved September 22, 2004.
Keating, Wick. (2004). Open source: Swimming with the tide. In Consultants' Briefing. Retrieved January 8, 2004.

External links

Firefox product page at Mozilla.org
Bugzilla -- List of bugs in Mozilla software.
Mozilla Update — Themes and extensions
Mozilla Firefox forums — from MozillaZine
SpreadFirefox.com — Firefox official community marketing page
Secunia advisories for Mozilla Firefox
Firefox Help - Online Help for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
MozillaZine Knowledge Base Wiki
Wikibooks: Using Firefox