The History of Mozilla Firefox March 11th, 2011
The development for Firefox began as an experimental tangent from Mozilla’s primary software focus, the Mozilla Suite. After fearing that their software suite was a bloated chunk of mostly useless sponsor driven project; Blake Ross Dave Hyatt, and Joe Hewitt began the Mozilla Firefox project, with plans to potentially ditch the Mozilla Suite altogether in favor of Firefox.
This turned out to be how things unfolded. Mozilla announced in 2003 that they would be shifting gears and focusing mainly on a now widely used browser called Mozilla Firefox, and in addition, their mail client software Thunderbird.
The History
Versions 1.0 – 1.5
The Mozilla Firefox project was originally named Phoenix. After a dispute with Phoenix Technologies, Mozilla decided to change to Mozilla Firebird. Unfortunately this name brought upon them the same results: an angry software company asking you to change your name. Mozilla refused and stated it was officially Mozilla Firebird, and should avoid confusion. After persistent complaints from the database software’s community, Mozilla reluctantly changed to Mozilla Firefox (more commonly referred to as just “Firefox”) in February of 2004.
In November of 2004, Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 on November 9th of the same year after many beta and release candidate versions. After a multitude of bug/stability fixes and their fair share of security fixes, Mozilla released the first major update, Firefox 1.5 on November 29, 2005. Windows 95 was first dropped after version 1.5.0.12.
Version 2.0
It was not until late October 2006 that Mozilla released Firefox 2. This update upgraded the interface to include tabbed browsing for the first time. This version also included the much needed inline spell checking feature. (Thanks for making the internet a more readable place, Firefox!) Other additions to the software included the extensions manager and the software update manager. Google’s anti-phishing extension came around this time, and was later added as a part of the software. Firefox 2.0.0.20 is the last version to support the operating systems Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition.
Version 3.0
The release date for Firefox 3 was June 17, 2008. Firefox 3 was the first version to run Gecko 1.9, it’s layout engine used for displaying pages. This version provided substantial updates to the standards compliance, fixes some bugs and implements new web based APIs. The download manager also got a revamp, as well as the bookmark and history systems. The last release under 3.0 was Firefox 3.0.19.
The Firefox 3 beta was widespread and became a rather popular subject around the net. The culmination of all the beta releases between November of 2007 and June of 2008 was the release of Firefox 3.0, and it’s 8 million unique downloads, setting a Guinness World Record.
Version 3.5
Mozilla’s Shiretoko, codename for release 3.5, adds a plethora of features. In fact, the original release number was 3.1, but the dev team felt 3.1 didn’t reflect the amount of improvements made the web browser. Changes included faster performance relating to a few areas. For one, the JavaScript engine was upgraded to TraceMonkey, under the SpiderMonkey family. The update also included support for a new HTML5 standard detailing <-video> and <-audio> tags to avoid patent issues common with video playback technologies. Mozilla also added support for multi-touch trackpads or tablets, with built in gestures such as pinching and swiping. 3.5 also included the 1.9.1 update to the Gecko engine.
Version 3.6
Firefox 3.6 was codenamed Namoroka. 3.6 was officially under development as of December 1, 2008. It was released shortly after on January 21, 2010. This update introduced Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine. This release also introduced Personas, Mozilla’s proprietary theming system. There were also many compatibility updates, as well as performance improvements in this version.
Version 3.6.4 introduced OOPP, or Out-of-process-plug-ins. This meant that plug-ins such as Adobe Flash or Apple’s QuickTime could run in a separate process, eliminating any browsing hindrance by poorly written code in web applications and media.
What’s in store for the future?
Firefox 4.o is soon scheduled to be released which will include many new features and performance updates. Read more about Mozilla Firefox 4.0 here.
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