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 Mozilla
Firefox is a free, open source, cross-platform, graphical web
browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of
volunteers.[1] Beginning as a fork of the Navigator component of the
Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox has since become the foundation's
main development focus (along with the Thunderbird mail and news
client), replacing the Mozilla Suite as the foundation's official main
software release.
Before the 1.0 release, Firefox had already gained acclaim from numerous
media outlets, including Forbes[2] and the Wall Street Journal.[3] With
over 25 million downloads in the 99 days after the initial 1.0 release,
Firefox became one of the most downloaded free and open source
applications, especially among home users.[4] On October 19, 2005,
Firefox had its 100 millionth download, less than 1 year (just 344 days)
after the release of version 1.0.[5] Firefox 1.5 was released on
November 29, 2005, with more than 2 million downloads within the first
36 hours.
Firefox includes an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, live
bookmarks, support for open standards, and an extension mechanism for
adding functionality. Although other browsers have some of these
features, Firefox became the first such browser to include them all and
achieve wide adoption.
Firefox has attracted attention as an alternative to other browsers such
as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari, which are included as
standard browsers with versions of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X
respectively. This is the main stumbling block for competing browsers as
many novice users are still unaware of alternatives.
As of January 2006, estimates suggest that Firefox's usage share is
around 10% of overall browser usage (see market adoption below), with
its highest usage in Finland (nearly 40% as of January 2006).
The development of Firefox 2.0 is currently underway, under the codename
Bon Echo. Bon Echo Alpha 1 became available on March 21, 2006; Alpha 2
on May 12, 2006; and Alpha 3 on May 26, 2006. All Firefox branding,
including icons, was removed to discourage end-users from downloading
it.
History
Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an
experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed that the
commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven
feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat
what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a
pared-down browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla
Suite.
Mozilla Firefox retains the cross-platform nature of the original
Mozilla browser by using the XUL user interface markup language. Through
Firefox's support of XUL, users may extend their browser's capabilities
by applying themes and extensions. Initially, these add-ons raised
security concerns, so with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla
Foundation opened Mozilla Update, a website containing themes and
extensions "approved" as not harmful.
The Mozilla Foundation intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and
to replace it with Firefox. On April 12, 2006, the Foundation announced
that official releases of Mozilla would cease with version 1.7.13. [2]
The Foundation continues to support the 1.7.x branch because of its
continued use by many corporate users, and because producers of other
software continue to include the product. The Mozilla community (as
opposed to the Foundation) continues to release new versions of the
suite using the product name SeaMonkey to avoid any possible confusion
with the original Mozilla Suite.
Branding and visual identity
The adoption of a new visual identity marks one of Firefox's most
visible enhancements from its previous versions. Some people have noted
that free software frequently suffers from poor icon and user interface
design and from a lack of a strong visual identity. Such opinion held
that the early releases of Firefox sported "reasonable" visual designs
but did not regard them as of a standard equivalent to many
"professionally" released software packages. The release of Firefox 0.8
in February 2004 saw the introduction of new branding efforts, including
new icons. Jon Hicks designed the icon for Firefox 0.8 and up.
The logo depicts a stylized fox, since the Red Panda (to which the term
"Firefox" originally referred [10]) did not "conjure up the right
imagery" for Hicks.[11] The specific logo won selection because it makes
an impression while still not "shouting" with overdone artwork.
The Firefox icon functions as a trademark used to designate the official
Mozilla build of the Firefox software. Although Firefox uses open source
core software, free licensing does not extend to the artwork. For this
reason, software distributors who distribute patched or modified
versions of Firefox cannot use the Firefox icon. |
