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Mozilla Firefox facts for kids

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Firefox
Firefox logo, 2019.svg
Firefox 110 on Windows 11
Firefox 110 on Windows 11
Developer(s) Mozilla Foundation and its contributors
Mozilla Corporation
Initial release November 9, 2004; 19 years ago (2004-11-09)
Stable release(s) [±]
50.1.0  (December 13, 2016; 7 years ago (2016-12-13))
Written in C++, JavaScript, HTML, C, Rust, and others
Operating system Linux
macOS 10.15 or later
Windows 10 or later
Android 5.0 or later
iOS 14.0 or later
Included with Various Unix-like operating systems
Available in 97 languages
Type Web browser
License MPL 2.0

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 anticipated web standards. In November 2017, Firefox began incorporating new technology under the code name "Quantum" to promote parallelism and a more intuitive user interface. Firefox is available for Windows 10 or later versions, macOS, and Linux. Its unofficial ports are available for various Unix and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, illumos, and Solaris Unix. It is also available for Android and iOS. However, as with all other iOS web browsers, the iOS version uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko due to platform requirements. An optimized version is also available on the Amazon Fire TV as one of the two main browsers available with Amazon's Silk Browser.

Firefox was created in 2002 under the code name "Phoenix" by members of the Mozilla community who desired a standalone browser rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, it proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. It was released on November 9, 2004, and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months. It is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla community was created by Netscape in 1998, before its acquisition by AOL.

Firefox usage share grew to a peak of 32.21% in November 2009, with Firefox 3.5 overtaking Internet Explorer 7, although not all versions of Internet Explorer as a whole; its usage then declined in competition with Google Chrome. As of July 2023, according to StatCounter, it had a 5.96% usage share as a desktop web browser, making it the fourth-most popular desktop web browser after Google Chrome (63.32%), Safari (13.13%), and Microsoft Edge (10.75%). Across all platforms, it again places fourth with a usage share of 2.79%.

History

The project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and Blake Ross. 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 standalone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. Version 0.1 was released on September 23, 2002. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that it planned to change its focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.

Phoenix 0.1
Screenshot of Phoenix 0.1 on Windows XP

The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. The nascent browser was originally named Phoenix, after the mythical bird that rose triumphantly from the ashes of its dead predecessor (in this case, from the "ashes" of Netscape Navigator, after it was sidelined by Microsoft Internet Explorer in the "First Browser War"). Phoenix was renamed in 2003 due to a trademark claim from Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird database software project. The Mozilla Foundation reassured them that the browser would always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion. After further pressure, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox on February 9, 2004. The name Firefox was said to be derived from a nickname of the red panda, which became the mascot for the newly named project. For the abbreviation of Firefox, Mozilla prefers Fx or fx, although it is often abbreviated as FF.

The Firefox project went through many versions before version 1.0 and had already gained a great deal of acclaim from numerous media outlets, such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. Among Firefox's popular features were 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 was the first of these browsers to have achieved large-scale adoption. Firefox attracted attention as an alternative to Internet Explorer, which had come under fire for its alleged poor program design and insecurity—detractors cite IE's lack of support for certain Web standards, use of the potentially dangerous ActiveX component, and vulnerability to spyware and malware installation. Microsoft responded by releasing Windows XP Service Pack 2, which added several important security features to Internet Explorer 6.

Version 1.0 of Firefox was released on November 9, 2004. This was followed by version 1.5 in November 2005, version 2.0 in October 2006, version 3.0 in June 2008, version 3.5 in June 2009, version 3.6 in January 2010, and version 4.0 in March 2011. From version 5 onwards, the development and release model changed into a "rapid" one; by the end of 2011 the stable release was version 9, and by the end of 2012 it reached version 17.

Major redesigns of its graphical user interface occurred on versions 4.0 "Strata" in March 2011, 29.0 "Australis" in April 2014, 57.0 "Quantum" in November 2017, and 89.0 "Proton" in June 2021.

In 2016, Mozilla announced a project known as Quantum, which sought to improve Firefox's Gecko engine and other components to improve the browser's performance, modernize its architecture, and transition the browser to a multi-process model. These improvements came in the wake of decreasing market share to Google Chrome, as well as concerns that its performance was lapsing in comparison. Despite its improvements, these changes required existing add-ons for Firefox to be made incompatible with newer versions, in favor of a new extension system that is designed to be similar to Chrome and other recent browsers. Firefox 57, which was released in November 2017, was the first version to contain enhancements from Quantum, and has thus been named Firefox Quantum. A Mozilla executive stated that Quantum was the "biggest update" to the browser since version 1.0. Unresponsive and crashing pages only affect other pages loaded within the same process. While Chrome uses separate processes for each loaded tab, Firefox distributes tabs over four processes by default (since Quantum), in order to balance memory consumption and performance. The process count can be adjusted, where more processes increase performance at the cost of memory, therefore suitable for computers with larger RAM capacity.

On May 3, 2019, the expiration of an intermediate signing certificate on Mozilla servers caused Firefox to automatically disable and lock all browser extensions (add-ons). Mozilla began the roll-out of a fix shortly thereafter, using their Mozilla Studies component.

On January 13, 2022, an issue with Firefox's HTTP/3 implementation resulted in a widespread outage for multiple hours.

Features

Features of the desktop edition include tabbed browsing, full-screen mode, spell checking, incremental search, smart bookmarks, bookmarking and downloading through drag and drop, a download manager, user profile management, private browsing, bookmark tags, bookmark exporting, offline mode, a screenshot tool, web development tools, a "page info" feature which shows a list of page metadata and multimedia items, a sophisticated configuration menu at about:config for power users, and more location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based on a Google service. Firefox has an integrated search system which uses Google by default in most markets but an update for American users in 2021 made it start including paid promotions by default in its suggestions. DNS over HTTPS is another feature whose default behaviour is determined geographically.

Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, and extensions, such as Firebug and more recently there has been an integration feature with Pocket. Firefox Hello was an implementation of WebRTC, added in October 2014, which allows users of Firefox and other compatible systems to have a video call, with the extra feature of screen and file sharing by sending a link to each other. Firefox Hello was scheduled to be removed in September 2016.

Former features include a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client for browsing file servers, the ability to block images from individual domains (until version 72), a 3D page inspector (versions 11 to 46), tab grouping (until version 44), and the ability to add customized extra toolbars (until version 28).

Browser extensions

Functions can be added through add-ons created by third-party developers. Add-ons are primarily coded using an HTML, CSS, JavaScript, with API known as WebExtensions, which is designed to be compatible with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extension systems. Firefox previously supported add-ons using the XUL and XPCOM APIs, which allowed them to directly access and manipulate much of the browser's internal functionality. As compatibility was not included in the multi-process architecture, XUL add-ons have been deemed Legacy add-ons and are no longer supported on Firefox 57 "Quantum" and newer.

Mozilla has occasionally installed extensions for users without their permission. This happened in 2017 when an extension designed to promote the show Mr Robot was silently added in an update to Firefox.

Security

The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" (US$3,000 to US$7,500 cash reward) to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.

On January 28, 2013, Mozilla was recognized as the most trusted internet company for privacy in 2012. This study was performed by the Ponemon Institute and was a result of a survey from more than 100,000 consumers in the United States.

In January 2015, TorrentFreak reported that using Firefox when connected to the internet using a VPN can be a serious security issue due to the browser's support for WebRTC.

In March 2021, Firefox launched SmartBlock in version 87 to offer protection against cross-site tracking, without breaking the websites users visit. Also known as state partitioning or "total cookie protection", works via a feature in the browser that isolates data from each site visited by the user to ensure that cross-site scripting is very difficult if not impossible. The feature also isolates local storage, service workers and other common ways for sites to store data.

Localizations

Firefox is a widely localized web browser. The first official release in November 2004 was available in 24 different languages and for 28 locales, including British English, American English, European Spanish, Argentine Spanish, Chinese in Traditional Chinese characters and Simplified Chinese characters and in Bangla. As of September 2023, currently supported versions 117.0.1, 115.2.1esr and 102.15.1esr are available in 97 locales (88 languages).

Platform availability

The desktop version of Firefox is available and supports Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux, while Firefox for Android is available for Android (formerly Firefox for mobile, it also ran on Maemo, MeeGo and Firefox OS) and Firefox for iOS is available for iOS. Smartphones that support Linux but do not support Android or iOS apps can also run Firefox in its desktop version, for example using postmarketOS.

Firefox source code may be compiled for various operating systems; however, officially distributed binaries are provided for the following:

Required hardware and software
Requirement Microsoft Windows Linux desktop macOS Android iOS
CPU 1GHz or faster compatible processor (or ARM64 for Windows)
ESR: Pentium 4 or newer with SSE2 (or ARM64 for Windows)
Any x86-64 and ARM64 CPU ARMv7, ARM64, IA-32 and x64 ARM64
Memory (RAM) GB for the 32-bit version and 2 GB for the 64-bit version
ESR: 512 MB for the 32-bit version and 2 GB for the 64-bit version
384 MB  ?
Data storage device free space 500 MB
ESR: 200 MB
80 MB ~110 MB
Operating system Windows 10 or later
Windows Server 2016 or later
ESR: Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, 8, Server 2012, 8.1 and Server 2012 R2
  • GTK 3.14 or newer
  • libstdc++ 4.8.1 or newer
  • X.Org 1.0 or newer
  • glibc 2.17 or newer
  • NetworkManager 0.7 or newer
  • DBus 1.0 or newer
  • GNOME 2.16 or newer
  • PulseAudio
  • X.Org 1.7 or newer
  • libxtst 1.2.3 or newer
macOS 10.15 or newer
ESR: 10.12-10.14
5.0 or newer iOS 14 or later

Firefox Reality (AR/VR)

Firefox Reality was released for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality headsets in September 2018. It supports traditional web-browsing through 2D windows and immersive VR pages through Web VR. Firefox Reality is available on HTC Vive, Oculus, Google Daydream and Microsoft Hololens headsets. In February 2022 Mozilla announced that Igalia took over stewardship of this project under the new name of Wolvic.

Promotion

Firefox mascot - FISL 16
Firefox mascot at the FISL 16 (2015), Brazil

Firefox was adopted rapidly, with 100 million downloads in its first year of availability. This was followed by a series of aggressive marketing campaigns starting in 2004 with a series of events Blake Ross and Asa Dotzler called "marketing weeks".

Firefox continued to heavily market itself by releasing a marketing portal dubbed "Spread Firefox" (SFX) on September 12, 2004, It debuted along with the Firefox Preview Release, creating a centralized space for the discussion of various marketing techniques. The release of their manifesto stated that "the Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet." A two-page ad in the edition of December 16 of The New York Times, placed by Mozilla Foundation in coordination with Spread Firefox, featured the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation's fundraising campaign to support the launch of the Firefox 1.0 web browser. SFX portal enhanced the "Get Firefox" button program, giving users "referrer points" as an incentive. The site lists the top 250 referrers. From time to time, the SFX team or SFX members launch marketing events organized at the Spread Firefox website. As a part of the Spread Firefox campaign, there was an attempt to break the world download record with the release of Firefox 3. This resulted in an official certified Guinness world record, with over eight million downloads. In February 2011, Mozilla announced that it would be retiring Spread Firefox (SFX). Three months later, in May 2011, Mozilla officially closed Spread Firefox. Mozilla wrote that "there are currently plans to create a new iteration of this website [Spread Firefox] at a later date."

In celebration of the third anniversary of the founding of the Mozilla Foundation, the "World Firefox Day" campaign was established on July 15, 2006, and ran until September 15, 2006. Participants registered themselves and a friend on the website for nomination to have their names displayed on the Firefox Friends Wall, a digital wall that was displayed at the headquarters of the Mozilla Foundation.

The Firefox community has also engaged in the promotion of their web browser. In 2006, some of Firefox's contributors from Oregon State University made a crop circle of the Firefox logo in an oat field near Amity, Oregon, near the intersection of Lafayette Highway and Walnut Hill Road. After Firefox reached 500 million downloads on February 21, 2008, the Firefox community celebrated by visiting Freerice to earn 500 million grains of rice.

Other initiatives included Live Chat – a service Mozilla launched in 2007 that allowed users to seek technical support from volunteers. The service was later retired.

To promote the launch of Firefox Quantum in November 2017, Mozilla partnered with Reggie Watts to produce a series of TV ads and social media content.

Usage share

StatCounter-browser-ww-yearly-2009-2020 (updated until November)
Usage share of web browsers according to StatCounter

Downloads have continued at an increasing rate since Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004, and as of 31 July  2009 (2009 -07-31) Firefox had already been downloaded over one billion times. This number does not include downloads using software updates or those from third-party websites. They do not represent a user count, as one download may be installed on many machines, one person may download the software multiple times, or the software may be obtained from a third-party.

In July 2010, IBM asked all employees (about 400,000) to use Firefox as their default browser.

Firefox was the second-most used web browser until November 2011, when Google Chrome surpassed it. According to Mozilla, Firefox had more than 450 million users as of October 2012.

Up to early 2023, Firefox was the fourth-most widely used desktop browser, and it was the fourth-most popular with 2.77% of worldwide usage share of web browsers across all platforms.

Desktop/laptop browser statistics
Google Chrome
  
66.22%
Safari
  
11.89%
Microsoft Edge
  
10.95%
Mozilla Firefox
  
5.59%
Opera
  
3.12%
Other
  
2.24%
Desktop web browser market share according to StatCounter for April 2023

According to the Firefox Public Data report by Mozilla, the active monthly count of Desktop clients has decreased from around 310 million in 2017 to 200 million in 2023. From Oct 2020, the desktop market share of Firefox started to decline in countries where it used to be the most popular. In Eritrea, it dropped from 50% in Oct 2020 to 9.32% in Sept 2021. In Cuba, it dropped from 54.36% in Sept 2020 to 38.42% in Sept 2021.

Third-party forks

In addition to versions of Firefox made internally and the email client Mozilla Thunderbird, there are several third-party web browsers based on Firefox, including:

  • Abrowser
  • Basilisk
  • Classilla
  • Cliqz
  • Comodo IceDragon
  • Ghostery Dawn
  • GNU IceCat
  • K-Meleon
  • LibreWolf, a fork focused on privacy and security
  • Light
  • Mull Browser
  • Pale Moon
  • Parrotgeek Firefox Legacy (for Mac OS X)
  • Swiftweasel
  • TenFourFox
  • The Tor Browser
  • Waterfox
  • Wild Fox

Guinness World record

The date for the launch of Firefox 3 was June 17, 2008, named "Download Day 2008." Firefox was aiming to set the record for most Firefox downloads in 24 hours. As of June 18, 2008, more than 6.88 million people have downloaded Firefox 3.

Many people tried going to the Mozilla website on June 17, making it unavailable for at least a few hours. The site was not updated for the download of Firefox 3 until 12:00 PDT. "Download Day" ended at 11:16 AM PDT June 18. Firefox 3 has been downloaded 28,340,281 different times.

Awards

Mozilla Firefox has been given a number of awards by many 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

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Mozilla Firefox para niños

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