The project that became

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

today began as an experimental branch of the

Mozilla Suite The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla, marketed as the Mozilla Suite) is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisitio ...

called ''m/b'' (or ''mozilla/browser''). Firefox retains the

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

nature of the original Mozilla browser, using the XUL user interface markup language. The use of XUL makes it possible to extend the browser's capabilities through the use of extensions and themes. 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. The use of XUL sets Firefox apart from other browsers, including other projects based on Mozilla's

Gecko Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from . Geckos ar ...

layout engine and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms ( Galeon and Epiphany use

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...

K-Meleon K-Meleon is a free and open-source, lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows. Unlike cross-platform browsers, it uses the native Windows API to create its user interface. K-Meleon can use the secure Goanna layout engine based on Mozilla's ...

uses MFC, and

Camino Camino may refer to: Places *Camino, California, United States, a census-designated place *Camino, Piedmont, Italy, a town * Camino, Veneto, Italy, a town People *Jaime Camino (1936–2015), Spanish film director and screenwriter *Renae Camino ...

uses

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

). Many of these projects started before Firefox, and probably served as inspiration.

Releases

Phoenix and Firebird

Hyatt, Ross, Hewitt and Chanial developed their browser to combat the perceived

software bloat Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program become perceptibly slower, use more memory, disk space or processing power, or have higher hardware requirements than the previous version, while making only dubious us ...

of the

(codenamed, internally referred to, and continued by the community as ''

SeaMonkey SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netsca ...

''), which integrated features such as IRC,

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

, news, and

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

editing into one

internet suite An Internet suite is an Internet-related software suite. Internet suites usually include a web browser, e-mail client (often with a news client and address book), download manager, HTML editor, and an IRC client. The diversity of Internet suite o ...

. After it was sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name ''Phoenix''. This name carried the implication of the mythical firebird that rose triumphantly from the ashes of its dead predecessor, in this case

Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...

which lost the "

First browser war A browser war is competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Expl ...

" to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

. The name ''Mozilla'' began as the internal

codename A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...

for the original 1994 Netscape Navigator browser aiming to displace

NCSA Mosaic NCSA Mosaic is a discontinued web browser, one of the first to be widely available. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. It was named for its support ...

as the world's most popular

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

. The name for this would-be "Mosaic killer" was meant to evoke the building-crushing

Godzilla is a fictional monster, or '' kaiju'', originating from a series of Japanese films. The character first appeared in the 1954 film '' Godzilla'' and became a worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 32 films produ ...

. The name ''Mozilla'' was revived as the 1998 open sourcing spinoff organization from Netscape. The name ''Phoenix'' remained until April 14, 2003, when it was changed because of a trademark dispute with the

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...

manufacturer

Phoenix Technologies Phoenix Technologies Ltd is an American company that designs, develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices. The company's products commonly referred to as BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or fir ...

(which produces a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, ''Firebird'', met with mixed reactions, particularly as the Firebird database server already carried the name. In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software.

Firefox

Due to continuing pressure from the Firebird community, on February 9, 2004, the project was renamed again to ''Mozilla Firefox''. The name "Firefox" (a reference to the

red panda The red panda (''Ailurus fulgens''), also known as the lesser panda, is a small mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It has dense reddish-brown fur with a black belly and legs, white-lined ears, a mostly white muzz ...

) was chosen for its similarity to "Firebird", and 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 A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from oth ...

with the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

in December 2003. This trademark process led to a delay of several months in the release of Firefox 0.8 when the foundation discovered that Firefox had already been registered as a trademark in the UK for Charlton Company software. The situation was resolved when the foundation was given a license to use Charlton's European trademark. Firefox version 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. The launch of version 1.0 was accompanied by "a respectable amount of pre-launch fervor" including a fan-organized campaign to run a full-page ad in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Although the Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and replace it with Firefox, the Foundation continued to maintain the suite until April 12, 2006 because it had many corporate users and was bundled with other software. The Mozilla community (as opposed to the Foundation) continues to release new versions of the suite, using the product name

to avoid confusion with the original Mozilla Suite.

Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 was released on November 30, 2005. Originally, it was planned to have a version 1.1 at an earlier date as the new Firefox version after 1.0, with development on a later version (1.5) in a separate development branch, but during 2005 both branches and their feature sets were merged (the Mozilla Foundation abandoned the 1.1 release plan after the first two alpha builds), resulting in an official release date between the original dates planned for both versions. Version 1.5 implemented a new Mac-lik
options interface
the subject of much criticism from Microsoft Windows and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

users, with a
Sanitize
action to allow someone to clear their privacy-related information without manually clicking the "Clear All" button. In Firefox 1.5, a user could clear all privacy-related settings simply by exiting the browser or using a keyboard shortcut, depending on their settings. Moreover, the software update system wa

(with binary patches now possible). There were als

in the extension management system, with a number o

In addition, Firefox 1.5 had preliminary SVG 1.1 support. Behind the screens, the new version resynchronized the code base of the release builds (as opposed to nightly builds) with the core "trunk", which contained additional features not available in 1.0, as it branched from the trunk around the 0.9 release. As such, there was a backlog of bug fixes between 0.9 and the release of 1.0, which were made available in 1.5. There were also changes in

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

support. As announced on 23 June 2005 by the Mozilla Foundation, Firefox 1.1, which later became 1.5, and other new Mozilla products did no longer support Mac OS X v10.1, in order to improve the quality of Firefox releases on Mac OS X v10.2 and above. Firefox 1.5 is the final version to support

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufactu ...

. Alpha builds of Firefox 1.5 (id est, 1.1a1 and 1.1a2) did not carry Firefox branding; they were labelled "Deer Park" (which was Firefox 1.5's internal codename) and contained a different program icon. This was done to dissuade end-users from downloading preview versions, which are intended for developers only.

Firefox 2

On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released

Firefox 2 Mozilla Firefox 2 is a version of Firefox, a web browser released on October 24, 2006 by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 2 uses version 1.8 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. The release contained many new features not fou ...

. This version included updates to the

tabbed browsing In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or panels to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. It is an interface ...

environment, the extensions manager, the GUI (Graphical User Interface), and the find, search and software update engines. It also implemented a new session restore feature, inline spell checking, and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

as an extension and later merged into the program itself. In December 2007, Firefox Live Chat was launched. It allowed users to ask volunteers questions through a system powered by

Jive Software Jive Software, an Aurea Software company, is a provider of communication and collaboration software for business. Jive was headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 2001, Jive maintains additional offices in Portland, OR; San Francisco, ...

, with guaranteed hours of operation and the possibility of help after hours. Firefox 2.0.0.20 was the final version that could run under an unmodified installation of Windows NT 4.0,

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released ...

, and

Windows Me Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Win ...

. Subsequently, Mozilla Corporation announced it would not develop new versions of Firefox 2 after the 2.0.0.20 release, but continued Firefox 2 development as long as other programs, such as Thunderbird mail client, depended on it. The final internal release was 2.0.0.22, released in late April 2009.

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008, by the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of op ...

. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Mozilla

layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web

APIs Apis or APIS may refer to: * Apis (deity), an ancient Egyptian god * Apis (Greek mythology), several different figures in Greek mythology * Apis (city), an ancient seaport town on the northern coast of Africa **Kom el-Hisn, a different Egyptian ci ...

. Other new features include a redesigned

download manager A download manager is a software tool that manages the download, downloading of computer file, files from the Internet, which may be built: into a Web browser, or as a, usually more sophisticated Application software, program. Data transmission ...

, a new "Places" system for storing

bookmarks A bookmark is used to keep one's place in a printed work. It can also refer to: * Bookmark (digital), a pointer in a web browser and other software * ''Bookmarks'' (album) by Five for Fighting * ''Bookmarks'' (magazine), an American literary ma ...

and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

, and separate themes for different operating systems. Development stretches back to the first Firefox 3

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labi ...

(under the codename 'Gran Paradiso') which had been released several months earlier on November 19, 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 Record ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

Firefox 3.5

Version 3.5, codenamed Shiretoko, 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

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

engine called TraceMonkey and rendering improvements, and support for the and tags as defined in the

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HT ...

specification, with a goal to offer video playback without being encumbered by

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling disclo ...

problems associated with many video technologies. Cross-site XMLHttpRequests (XHR), which can allow for more powerful web applications and an easier way to implement mashups, are also implemented in 3.5. A new global

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other s ...

object contains native functions to efficiently and safely serialize and deserialize JSON objects, as specified by the

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scriptin ...

3.1 draft. Ful
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-touch touchpad support was also added to the release, including gesture support like pinching for zooming and swiping for back and forward. Firefox 3.5 also features an updated logo.

Firefox 3.6

Version 3.6, released on January 21, 2010, uses the Gecko 1.9.2 engine and includes several interface improvements, such as "personas". This release was referred to as 3.2 before 3.1 was changed to 3.5. The codename for this version was Namoroka. This is the last major, official version to run on

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM ...

-based

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

es. One minor update to Firefox 3.6, version 3.6.4 (code-named Lorentz) is the first minor update to make non-intrusive changes other than minor stability and security fixes. It adds Out of Process Plugins (OOPP), which runs plugins in a separate

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

, allowing Firefox to recover from plugin crashes. Firefox 3.6.6 lengthens the amount of time a plugin is allowed to be unresponsive before the plugin quits.

Firefox 4

On October 13, 2006,

Brendan Eich Brendan Eich (; born July 4, 1961) is an American computer programmer and technology executive. He created the JavaScript programming language and co-founded the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla Corporation. He served ...

, Mozilla's then- Chief-Technology-Officer, 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. After five "Alpha" releases, twelve "Beta" releases, and two "Release Candidate" versions, Firefox 4 was released on March 22, 2011, originally Firefox 3.7 (Gecko 1.9.3) during its alpha stage, brought a new

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

and is said to be faster. Early

mockup In manufacturing and design, a mockup, or mock-up, is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. A mockup may be a '' prototype'' if it provides at lea ...

s of the new interface on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

were first made available in July 2009. Other new features included improved notifications, tab groups, "switch to tab" where opened tabs can be searched through the address bar, application tabs, a redesigned add-on manager, integration with Firefox Sync, and support for multi-touch displays. Firefox 4 was based on the

2.0 engine, which added or improved support for

, CSS3,

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponso ...

, and WebGL. It also included a new JavaScript engine ( JägerMonkey) and better XPCOM APIs.

Releases

Phoenix and Firebird

Firefox

Firefox 1.5

Firefox 2

Firefox 3

Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.6

Firefox 4

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links