Firefox 3 Beta 1 includes a handful of new security features designed to help end users recognize problematic sites. With a single click, users can now see who owns a Web site, and future versions will display Extended Validation SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate details. Built-in malware protection will warn users when they navigate to blacklisted sites known for installing viruses, spyware and trojans, and the content of pages suspected of being Web forgeries -- used to capture account and identity details -- no longer display to end users.
Additional improvements include more rigorous SSL certificate error notices, add-ons and plugin checks that that disable insecure updates, anti-virus integration, and Windows Vista parental control cooperation.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
New Features
"The most important, I think, by far will be the improvements in memory handling and performance and the support for offline browser applications," Stephen O'Grady, an industry analyst for RedMonk, told LinuxInsider.
Mozilla plugged more than 300 individual memory leaks and added a new XPCOM (cross platform component object model) cycle collector that completely eliminates many more, it said. Firefox developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use, Mozilla added, by releasing cached objects more quickly and reducing fragmentation. As for performance, major architectural changes are building the foundation for speed increases in future betas.
Support for offline browser applications is built into Firefox 3, but Web sites will need to offer offline support on their sites in order for it to work. The same goes for organizations building Web apps that will be utilized by employees using Firefox 3 offline.
Mozilla plugged more than 300 individual memory leaks and added a new XPCOM (cross platform component object model) cycle collector that completely eliminates many more, it said. Firefox developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use, Mozilla added, by releasing cached objects more quickly and reducing fragmentation. As for performance, major architectural changes are building the foundation for speed increases in future betas.
Support for offline browser applications is built into Firefox 3, but Web sites will need to offer offline support on their sites in order for it to work. The same goes for organizations building Web apps that will be utilized by employees using Firefox 3 offline.
Firefox 3
Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation has posted the first public beta of Firefox 3. At the same time, however, Mozilla is warning that the beta is for testing purposes only and not for casual users. Because this beta is targeted at testing core functionality added to the browser, Mozilla notes that some of Firefox 3 Beta 1 is still a bit "rough around the edges." For example, many Firefox 2 add-ons don't work properly with this first beta.
Still, early testers seem pleased with the promise of Firefox 3, which is packed with new features and tweaks alike. The latest version is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months, Mozilla said, and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes that fix more than 11,000 issues.
"Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness and code simplification and sustainability," Mozilla noted. "Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer Web site and Firefox add-on developers."
Still, early testers seem pleased with the promise of Firefox 3, which is packed with new features and tweaks alike. The latest version is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months, Mozilla said, and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes that fix more than 11,000 issues.
"Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness and code simplification and sustainability," Mozilla noted. "Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer Web site and Firefox add-on developers."
Download count
Downloads have continued at an increasing rate since Firefox 1.0 was released in November 2004. No other Mozilla Foundation product has experienced such growth.[3]
| Date | Number of days | Downloads (millions) |
|---|---|---|
| November 10, 2004 | 1 | 1 |
| February 16, 2005 | 99 | 25 |
| April 29, 2005 | 171 | 50 |
| July 26, 2005 | 259 | 75 |
| October 19, 2005 | 344 | 100 |
| March 3, 2006 | 479 | 150 |
| July 31, 2006 | 629 | 200 |
| November 11, 2006 | 732 | 250 |
| February 12, 2007 | 825 | 300 |
| September 7, 2007 | 1032 | 400 |
These numbers do not include downloads using software updates or from third-party websites. They do not represent a user count, as one download may be installed on many machines, or one person may download the software multiple times. According to Mozilla COO John Lilly, Firefox had at least 125 million users as of November 2007.
Release compatibility
| Operating Systems | Latest version |
|---|---|
| Linux kernel 2.2.14 and newer, with some libraries | 2.0.0.11 |
| Mac OS X v10.1 | 1.0.8 |
| Mac OS X v10.2-10.5 | 2.0.0.11 |
| OS/2 and eComstation | 2.0.0.11 |
| Windows 95 | 1.5.0.12 |
| Windows NT 4/98/2000/ME/XP/Vista | 2.0.0.11 |
Early beginnings: a pared-down browser
Phoenix 0.1, the first official release
Phoenix 0.1, the first official release
Firefox 1.0, the first release targeted for general public
Firefox 1.0, the first release targeted for general public
Hyatt and Ross' mozilla/browser (later Phoenix, Firebird and finally Firefox) browser was created to combat the perceived software bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed, internally referred to, and continued by the community as SeaMonkey), which integrated features such as IRC, mail and news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing into one software suite.
Firefox retains the cross-platform 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 layout engine and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms (Galeon and Epiphany use GTK+; K-Meleon uses MFC; and Camino uses Cocoa). Many of these projects were started before Firefox, and probably served as inspiration.
The first sign of a Firefox-like project was a small application sample (presumably to demonstrate how to embed Gecko in another application) shipped with early milestone builds of Mozilla. Featuring only "back", "forward", and "stop" buttons and a URL field (no cache, no stored history, etc.), it was minimalistic and thus a lot lighter than Mozilla itself. Eventually, it was no longer shipped with Mozilla's binary builds.
Although the Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and to replace it with Firefox, the Foundation continued to maintain the suite until April 12, 2006[1] because it had many corporate users, as well as being bundled with other software. 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.
On February 5, 2004 the business and IT consulting company AMS categorized Mozilla Firefox (then Firebird) as a "Tier 1" (meaning "Best of Breed") open source product (Keating, 2004). This meant that AMS considered Firebird (as it was called at the time) to be virtually risk-free and technically strong.
Phoenix 0.1, the first official release
Firefox 1.0, the first release targeted for general public
Firefox 1.0, the first release targeted for general public
Hyatt and Ross' mozilla/browser (later Phoenix, Firebird and finally Firefox) browser was created to combat the perceived software bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed, internally referred to, and continued by the community as SeaMonkey), which integrated features such as IRC, mail and news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing into one software suite.
Firefox retains the cross-platform 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 layout engine and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms (Galeon and Epiphany use GTK+; K-Meleon uses MFC; and Camino uses Cocoa). Many of these projects were started before Firefox, and probably served as inspiration.
The first sign of a Firefox-like project was a small application sample (presumably to demonstrate how to embed Gecko in another application) shipped with early milestone builds of Mozilla. Featuring only "back", "forward", and "stop" buttons and a URL field (no cache, no stored history, etc.), it was minimalistic and thus a lot lighter than Mozilla itself. Eventually, it was no longer shipped with Mozilla's binary builds.
Although the Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and to replace it with Firefox, the Foundation continued to maintain the suite until April 12, 2006[1] because it had many corporate users, as well as being bundled with other software. 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.
On February 5, 2004 the business and IT consulting company AMS categorized Mozilla Firefox (then Firebird) as a "Tier 1" (meaning "Best of Breed") open source product (Keating, 2004). This meant that AMS considered Firebird (as it was called at the time) to be virtually risk-free and technically strong.
Naming
The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite called m/b (or mozilla/browser). When sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name Phoenix.
The Phoenix name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed (after a short stint as Phoenix Browser) due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, Firebird, was met with mixed reactions, particularly as the Firebird database server already carried the name. In late April, following an apparent name change to Firebird browser for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation issued an official statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as Mozilla Firebird (as opposed to just Firebird). Continuing pressure from the Firebird community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 the project was renamed Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short).
The name, "Firefox", was chosen for its similarity to "Firebird", but also for 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 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office 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 in the UK Firefox had already been registered as a trademark for browsers by The Charlton Company. The situation was resolved when the foundation was given a license to use Charlton's European trademark.
The repeated renaming of the program prompted the development of the tongue-in-cheek extension "Firesomething", which allowed users to randomize the name on startup, giving it such satirical soubriquets as "Firegiraffe" or "Moonbadger"
The Phoenix name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed (after a short stint as Phoenix Browser) due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, Firebird, was met with mixed reactions, particularly as the Firebird database server already carried the name. In late April, following an apparent name change to Firebird browser for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation issued an official statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as Mozilla Firebird (as opposed to just Firebird). Continuing pressure from the Firebird community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 the project was renamed Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short).
The name, "Firefox", was chosen for its similarity to "Firebird", but also for 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 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office 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 in the UK Firefox had already been registered as a trademark for browsers by The Charlton Company. The situation was resolved when the foundation was given a license to use Charlton's European trademark.
The repeated renaming of the program prompted the development of the tongue-in-cheek extension "Firesomething", which allowed users to randomize the name on startup, giving it such satirical soubriquets as "Firegiraffe" or "Moonbadger"
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