I personally prefer firefox coz its got loads of add-ons and good in-built security.
Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and a large community of external contributors. Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx[3] and popularly abbreviated FF,[4] started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation.
Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD,[5] OS/2, Solaris, RISC OS,[6] SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.[7]
Firefox's source code is available under the terms of the Mozilla tri-license (MPL/GPL/LGPL) as free and open source software.[8] The current stable release of Firefox is version 2.0.0.7, released on September 18, 2007.[9]
According to Market Share by Net Applications, 14.88% of the world's Web browsers used Firefox in September 2007, with 14.42% using version 1.5 or higher
Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser.[12] To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a pared-down browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.[13]
The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project.[14][15][16] In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. Continuing pressure from the database server's development community forced another change; on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox (Firefox for short).[17]
The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. In addition to stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update to Firefox version 1.5 on November 29, 2005. On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes updates to the tabbed browsing environment, the extensions manager, the GUI, and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by Google as an extension[18][19] and later merged into the program itself.[20]
Features included with Firefox are tabbed browsing, spell checker, incremental find (via the Find toolbar), Live bookmarking, an integrated download manager, and a search system that includes Google. The developers of Firefox aimed to produce a browser that "just surfs the web"[21] and delivers the "best possible browsing experience to the widest possible set of people."[22]
The user can customize Firefox with downloadable extensions and themes. Mozilla maintains an add-on repository at addons.mozilla.org with nearly 2000 add-ons in it as of September 2007.[23]
Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as Firebug.
[edit] Standards support
Firefox market share
by version[24] Firefox Betas 0.01 %
Firefox 1.0 0.44 %
Firefox 1.5 0.85 %
Firefox 2 13.95 %
Total 15.25 %
Mozilla Firefox supports many web standards, including HTML, XML, XHTML, SVG 1.1 (partial)[25], CSS, ECMAScript (JavaScript), DOM, MathML, DTD, XSLT, XPath, and PNG images with alpha transparency.[26] Firefox also supports standards proposals created by the WHATWG such as client-side storage[27][28] and canvas element.[29]
Although Firefox 2 does not pass the Acid2 standards-compliance test, development builds of Firefox 3 do.[30]
[edit] Security
Firefox uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol.[31] It uses a sandbox security model[32] and the developers use a "bug bounty" scheme, for finding fixes for some security[33] and feature additions. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.[34]
Because Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see Comparison of web browsers), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.[35][36][37][38] The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.[39]
A 2006 Symantec study showed that Firefox had surpassed other browsers in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September; these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in other browsers.[40] Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, as counted by security researchers.[41] As of August 22, 2007, Firefox 2 has six security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "less critical" by Secunia.[42] Internet Explorer has ten security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "highly critical" by Secunia.[43]
[edit] Licensing
Firefox is free and open source software, and is tri-licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).[8] These licenses permit anyone to view, modify and/or redistribute the source code, and several publicly released applications have been built on it; for example, Netscape, Flock and Songbird make use of code from Firefox.
The official end-user builds of Firefox distributed from mozilla.com are licensed under the Mozilla EULA.[2] Several elements do not fall under the scope of the tri-license and have their use restricted by the EULA, including the trademarked Firefox name and artwork, and the proprietary Talkback crash reporter. Because of this and the clickwrap agreement included in the Windows version, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) consider these builds proprietary software.[44]
In the past, Firefox was licensed solely under the MPL,[45] which the FSF criticizes for being weak copyleft; the license permits, in limited ways, proprietary derivative works. Additionally, code under the MPL cannot legally be linked with code under the GPL or the LGPL.[46][47] To address these concerns, Mozilla re-licensed Firefox under the tri-license scheme of MPL, GPL, and LGPL. Since the re-licensing, developers have been free to choose the license under which they will receive the code, to suit their intended use: GPL or LGPL linking and derivative works when one of those licenses is chosen, or MPL use (including the possibility of proprietary derivative works) if they choose the MPL
Forbes.com called Firefox the best browser in a 2004 commentary piece.[58] PC World named Firefox the "product of the year" in 2005 on their "100 Best Products of 2005" list.[59] After the release of Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, PC World reviewed both and declared that Firefox was the better browser.[60] Which? Magazine named Firefox its Best Buy web browser.[61]
Internet Week ran an article in which many readers reported high memory usage in Firefox 1.5.[62] Mozilla developers said the higher memory use of Firefox 1.5 is at least partially an effect of the new fast backwards-and-forwards (FastBack) feature.[63] Other known causes of memory problems are malfunctioning extensions, such as Google Toolbar and some old versions of Adblock,[64] or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader.[65] When PC Magazine compared memory usage of Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, they found that Firefox used approximately as much memory as the other browsers.[66] Tests performed by PC World and Zimbra indicate that Firefox 2 uses less memory than Internet Explorer 7.[60][67]
Like other browers, Firefox too has had a number of vulnerabilities that have affected its security, although according to CERT, not as many as Internet Explorer.
Softpedia notes that Firefox takes longer to start up than other browsers,[68] which was confirmed by browser speed tests. IE 6 also launches slightly faster than Firefox on Microsoft Windows since many of its components are built into Windows and are loaded during system startup. As a workaround for the issue, a preloader application was created that loads components of Firefox on startup, similar to Internet Explorer.[69] A feature of Windows Vista called SuperFetch does a similar task of preloading Firefox if its usage is high enough.
[edit] Relationship with Google
The Mozilla Corporation's relationship with Google[70][71] has been noted in the media, especially with regards to their paid referral agreement with Google. The release of the anti-phishing protection in Firefox 2 especially raised controversy.[72] Enabled by default, anti-phishing protection is based on a list that is updated about twice per hour and downloaded to the user's computer[73] from Google's server. The user cannot change the data provider within the GUI,[74] and is not informed who the default data provider is. The browser also sends Google's cookie with each request for update.[75] An additional, explicitly opt-in security feature has been added to recent builds by the Mozilla Foundation. This anti-phishing feature provides live protection by checking each visited URL with Google.[76] Some Internet privacy advocacy groups have expressed concerns surrounding Google's possible uses of this data, though Firefox's privacy policy states that Google may not use personal information for any purposes other than the anti-phishing protection feature.[73]
In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$52.9 million. Approximately 95 percent of this revenue[77] was related to their search engine relationships.[78]
[edit] Response from competition
Microsoft's head of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, stated in late 2004 that he did not see Firefox as a threat and that there was not significant demand for the feature set of Firefox among Microsoft's users.[79]
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but he has commented "so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?"[80] A Microsoft SEC filing on June 30, 2005 acknowledged that "competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products."[81]
Despite the cold reception from Microsoft's top management, the Internet Explorer development team does have a healthy relationship with Mozilla. They meet regularly to discuss web standards such as validation certificates.[82] In 2005 Mozilla agreed to allow Microsoft to use its RSS logo in the interest of common graphical representation of the RSS feature.[83]
In August 2006, Microsoft offered to help Mozilla integrate Firefox with the then-forthcoming Windows Vista,[84] which Mozilla accepted.[85]
In October 2006, as congratulations for a successful ship of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team sent a cake to Mozilla