Mozilla Firefox
Posted On Monday, September 1, 2008 at by am.punk.rock
Mozilla Firefox logo
Mozilla Firefox 3 running on Windows VistaMozilla Firefox is an open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite, managed by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox had 19.23% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of July 2008, making it the second-most popular browser in current use worldwide, after Internet Explorer.
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.
Firefox includes tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, and an integrated search system that uses the user's desired search engine. Functions can be added through add-ons created by third-party developers, the most popular of which include the NoScript JavaScript disabling utility, Tab Mix Plus customizer, FoxyTunes media player control toolbar, Adblock Plus ad blocking utility, StumbleUpon (website discovery), DownThemAll! download enhancer and Web Developer toolbar.
Firefox runs on various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and many other Unix-like operating systems. Its current stable release is version 3.0.1, released on July 16, 2008. Firefox's source code is free software, released under a tri-license GPL/LGPL/MPL.
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. 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.
The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project. In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. Continuing pressure from the database server's development community forced another change; on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox, often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla prefers Firefox to 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. On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes updates to the tabbed browsing environment, the extensions manager, the GUI, and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by Google as an extension, and later merged into the program itself. 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.
Award
Mozilla Firefox has been given a number of awards by various organizations. These awards include:
* CNET Editors' Choice, June 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
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