Mozilla Firefox's 8th Birthday

Happy Birthday Firefox. Eight years ago, today, on November 9, 2004 The Mozilla foundation launched the first version of Firefox.

When Firefox was launched, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 was on the top of the market share but had a lot of security issues. Mozilla’s open source browser was responded very well. The browser that would eventually become Firefox, called Phoenix, was actually launched as a beta in 2002. When the first stable version of the browser was launched in 2004, it was renamed to Firefox.

During these years, Firefox has earned reputation in web market. In the last couple of years it has gotten given a serious competition to Google’s Chrome, Opera, Apple’s Safari and others. Currently, Firefox is the world’s third most popular browser, behind Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

Courtesy: Mashable

IE and Firefox Cake giving tradition

Internet Explorer is no longer the best web browser, its dominated by Firefox and chrome. But it does not stop the Redmond company to stop the its team from continuing its cake-giving tradition with the makers of Firefox.

According to Mozilla employee Matt Brubeck, the IE team began it all when it sent over a cake to congratulate the company on the launch of Firefox 2 in 2006. Since then, the Internet Explorer crew has continued to send over cakes for each new version, though they smartly switched over to less-costly cupcakes when Mozilla began its accelerated 6-week upgrade cycles. 

To return the favor, Matt hand delivered a massive cake to celebrate the launch of Internet Explorer 10 this week to the Microsoft team's headquarters in Redmond, and signed it "Love  Mozilla." Competition  is only in the field of business, not in kindness.

Courtesy: The Verge

Firefox turns 10

Mozilla Firefox's decade: Firefox turns 10

March 31, 1998:  Coders at Netscape start an open-source project. They call it Mozilla, a former codename for the Netscape Navigator browser which was extremely popular in the 1990s. Mozilla was derived from the words “mosaic” (another popular 1990s browser) and “killer.”

Sept. 23, 2002:  The release of “Phoenix 0.1” marks the earliest version of the browser that would eventually become known as Firefox.

July 15, 2003:  The Mozilla Foundation is established. The foundation is a non-profit organization whose core belief is, “The Web is a shared public resource to be cared for, not a commodity to be sold.”

June 15, 2004:  Mozilla launches the Add-ons Gallery, an official comprehensive list of all the extensions, themes and plug-ins users can employ to customize their browsers.

Nov. 9, 2004:  Mozilla unveils Firefox 1.0, the first full version of the browser. Fans of the project organized a full-page advertisement in The New York Times to herald the release.

Aug. 12, 2006:  Enthusiastic Firefox fans, mostly students from Oregon State, make a 220-foot wide crop circle reproduction of the Firefox logo in an oat field near Amity, Ore.

Feb. 21, 2008: The total for downloads of Firefox surpasses 500 million.

June 17, 2008:  Mozilla releases Firefox Version 3.0, which establishes a Guinness World Record for “Most Downloads of a Software Application in 24 Hours,” totaling more than 8 million. There was no previous record.

Feb. 8, 2011:  The beta version of Firefox 4 includes a “Do Not Track” feature, furthering the company’s commitment to privacy awareness.

March 29, 2011:  Firefox releases a mobile browser for Android devices, initially available in more than 10 languages.

April 2011:  The company implements a “Rapid Release” schedule, making a new version of Firefox available every six weeks. By this schedule, there are always four versions of Firefox being worked on at a given time. Users can try the “Nightly” version, which has the latest updates that have not been fully vetted; the “Aurora” version, which is more stabilized; or the “Beta” version, the last step before an official release.

July 26, 2012:  The download total for add-ons surpasses 3 billion. Firefox currently has over 17,000 user-created add-ons.

Today:  More than 450 million people use Firefox. About 40% of the code was written by volunteers. The browser is extremely popular around the world; it is available in 75 languages and more than half of users employ non-English versions.