Today, November 9th marks the sixth birthday of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Firefox is my main browser of choice for the past eight years. I started using it back in 2002 when it was still called Phoenix/Firebird. I still remember the day I first installed it on my computer and how it felt to have a cool, new browser that was much better than the default Internet Explorer or alternative web browsers like Netscape and Opera.
For something that started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite, Firefox has surely gone a long way. Firefox is now available in more than 70 languages and has about a quarter of Internet users choosing Firefox as their web browser of choice. Mozilla Firefox has been downloaded more than 1 billion times with the latest version, Firefox 3.6 having been downloaded more than 42 million times. Aside from that, more than 150 million users use Firefox Add-ons to customize their Web experience.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the new features and other enhancements that will be added/included in the upcoming version – Firefox 4. New features will include a redesigned UI (user interface), a home tab, “door hanger” notifications, improved support for HTML5 and CSS3 features. Firefox 4 will also include the Firefox Sync project – a tool that allows users to sync stuff like bookmarks and browsing history with the cloud and a new type of tab called an “application tab” similar to the Mozilla Prism project which allows users to turn web pages like Gmail into applications.
I know that other browsers like Google Chrome and Opera can hold their own against Firefox but until another web browser can offer me the same addons/extensions I have on Firefox which I heavily use and rely on for work, I’ll continue to be a happy Firefox camper.
Happy 6th Birthday Mozilla Firefox
[image source: Flickr/Ryan Doherty]
