Mozilla Firefox

History

Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross began working on the Firefox project as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. They believed that 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 pared-down browser (then known as Phoenix, today known as Firefox), with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. Ben Goodger currently works as the lead developer of Firefox.

Related Topics:
Dave Hyatt - Blake Ross - Netscape - Feature creep - Software bloat - Ben Goodger

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Mozilla Firefox retains the cross-platform nature of the original Mozilla browser by using the XUL user interface markup language. Through Firefox's support of XUL, users may extend their browser's capabilities by applying themes and extensions. Initially, these add-ons raised security concerns, so with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla Foundation opened Mozilla Update, a website containing themes and extensions "approved" as not harmful.

Related Topics:
Cross-platform - XUL - User interface markup language - Theme - Extension - Mozilla Update

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The Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and to replace it with Firefox. On March 10, 2005, the Foundation announced that official releases of Mozilla would cease with the 1.7.x series. The Foundation continues to maintain the 1.7.x branch because of its continued use by many corporate users, and because makers of other software still often bundle the product. The Mozilla community (as opposed to the Foundation) will release the next version. These community releases will be called SeaMonkey, and will start out at version 1.0 to avoid any possible confusion for organizations or people still wanting to use the original Mozilla Suite. The Mozilla Foundation will continue giving support (such as CVS hosting) for the Mozilla community developers.

Related Topics:
March 10 - 2005 - Software - SeaMonkey - CVS

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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.

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The Phoenix name survived until April 14, 2003, when it changed due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, Firebird, provoked mixed reactions, particularly since the free database software Firebird uses the same name. In late April, following an apparent name change to Firebird browser for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird in order to avoid confusion with the Firebird database server. However, continuing pressure from the FLOSS community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short).

Related Topics:
April 14 - 2003 - Trademark - BIOS - Phoenix Technologies - Free - Firebird - FLOSS - February 9 - 2004

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The Mozilla Foundation chose the name "Firefox" for its similarity to "Firebird", but also for its uniqueness in the computing industry. To avoid any potential further name changes, the Mozilla Foundation began the process of registering Firefox as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in December 2003 {{ref|FirefoxTrademarkUSPTO}}. As "Firefox" already existed as a registered trademark in the United Kingdom, the Mozilla Foundation licensed the name from the trademark's owner.

Related Topics:
Firefox - Computing industry - Trademark - United States Patent and Trademark Office - 2003 - United Kingdom

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Branding and visual identity

The adoption of a new visual identity marks one of Firefox's most visible enhancements from its previous versions. Some people have noted that free software frequently suffers from poor icon and user interface design and from a lack of a strong visual identity. Such opinion held that the early releases of Firefox sported "reasonable" visual designs, but did not regard them as of a standard equivalent to many "professionally" released software packages. The release of Firefox 0.8 in February 2004 saw the introduction of new branding efforts, including new icons. Jon Hicks designed the icon for Firefox 0.8 and up.

Related Topics:
Visual identity - User interface

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The logo depicts a stylized fox, since the Red Panda (which is what the term "Firefox" was originally referring to {{ref|FirefoxNameFAQ}}) didn't "conjure up the right imagery" for Hicks {{ref|BrandingFirefox}}. The specific logo won selection because it makes an impression, while still not "shouting" with overdone artwork.

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The Firefox icon functions as a trademark used to designate the official Mozilla build of the Firefox software. Although Firefox uses open source core software, free licensing does not extend to the artwork. For this reason, software distributors who distribute patched or modified versions of Firefox may not use the icon.

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Release history

Firefox has developed considerably since its first release as Phoenix on September 23, 2002. Pre-1.0 releases suffered many issues with extensions, as the code for handling them changed from version to version. Several minor releases took place in the 1.0.x branch to address some security and regression issues.

Related Topics:
September 23 - 2002

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Several builds codenamed "Deer Park" were released ("Alpha 1" in May 2005, and "Alpha 2" in July), and were originally destined to become Firefox 1.1. However, Mozilla Foundation decided to change the version number of the next major release from "1.1" to "1.5", since it contained more new features than originally planned. The builds use the latest Gecko core (1.8b4) as a basis, and feature numerous bug fixes, partial support for SVG, and support for the HTML canvas element. In an attempt to dissuade end-users from downloading the preview versions, "Deer Park" versions do not use the standard Mozilla Firefox branding.

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Throughout its development, Firefox versions have had internal codenames. These have a basis in real locations, with codenames such as Three Kings, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill, Mission Bay, and Greenlane all referencing suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand, and the name Whangamata coming from a small seaside town on the Coromandel Peninsula, southeast of Auckland in New Zealand. Ben Goodger, who grew up in Auckland, chose these codenames. The other codenames included in the Firefox roadmap derive from an actual roadmap of a journey through California to Phoenix, Arizona. {{ref|Roadmap}}

Related Topics:
Three Kings - Royal Oak - One Tree Hill - Mission Bay - Greenlane - Auckland - New Zealand - Whangamata - Coromandel Peninsula - California - Phoenix - Arizona

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According to Goodger, "Deer Park is not Deer Park, Victoria, but just a symbolic name. I was riding LIRR a few weeks ago and saw the name go by and I thought it sounded nice". Therefore, this name probably references Deer Park, New York, a CDP on Long Island.

Related Topics:
Deer Park, Victoria - LIRR - Deer Park, New York - CDP - Long Island

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Future development

The next planned release of Firefox was supposed to be version 1.1, but has been renamed to 1.5. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 and 2 were released on September 9, 2005 and October 6, 2005 respectively, in preparation for the first release candidate which is expected at the end of October; most likely putting the final 1.5 release sometime in November 2005. Firefox 1.5 will resync the code-base of the release builds (as opposed to nightly builds) with the core "trunk" which contains additional features not available in 1.0, as it branched from the trunk around the 0.9 release. As such, a backlog of bug fixes between 0.9 and the release of 1.0 will become available in 1.5. Version 1.5 will also implement a new Mac-like option interface, much criticized by some Windows and Linux users, with a "Clear Private Data" action to allow a person to clear their privacy related information without manually clicking the "Clear All" button. Users will have the option of clearing all privacy-related settings simply by exiting the browser or by using a keyboard shortcut, depending on their settings. {{ref|PrivacySettings}} Moreover, the Software Update System will improve with binary patches becoming possible {{ref|UpdateSystem}}. Users can also expect improvements in the Extension management system {{ref|Extensions}}. An important feature to be enabled in Firefox 1.5 is partial support of the Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 Full Specification. This move makes Firefox the second major browser to support some form of SVG natively (Opera 8.0, released on April 19, 2005 supports most of the SVG 1.1 Tiny Specification).

Related Topics:
September 9 - 2005 - October 6 - October - November - Branched - Scalable Vector Graphics - Opera - April 19

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On June 23, 2005, Mozilla Foundation announced that Firefox 1.5 (and other new Mozilla products) will no longer support Mac OS X v10.1. This is intended to improve the quality of Firefox releases on Mac OS X v10.2 and above. Users of 10.1 may still use Firefox version 1.0.x.

Related Topics:
June 23 - 2005 - Mac OS X v10.1 - Mac OS X v10.2

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According to the roadmap, future Firefox development will feature three milestones: version 1.5, version 2.0 and version 3.0. Development for these releases will take place on the Mozilla trunk, with a release coming off a branch {{ref|TrunksBranches}}.

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Likely goals for Firefox include {{ref|Firefox2pt0Goals}}:

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• New "Places" interface for Bookmark and History
• Tabbed Browsing improvements
• Specific options per site
• Extension system enhancements
• Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search enhancements
• Accessibility compliance
• Download resuming, detection of signed executables

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and future releases of Camino will also include the Java Embedding Plugin, which allow Mac OS X users to run Java applets with the latest 1.4 and 5.0 versions of Java (the default Java software shipped by Apple is not compatible to any browser, except its own Safari).

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