Difference between revisions of "Mozilla Firefox"

Revision as of 07:09, September 10, 2018

Mozilla Firefox v43.0.4 running on Windows 7.

Mozilla Firefox v2.0 running on Windows Vista.

Firefox redirects here. For the novel and film of this title, see Firefox (novel and film). For other uses, see Firefox (disambiguation).

Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0 and is one of the main competitors of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, along with Google Chrome.

In 2017, Mozilla's Project Quantum developed a new browser engine. A developer edition of the browser with this new engine was released in September 2017^[1] with a general release taking place two months later. This new engine is at least twice as fast as the old gecko engine, and still uses less system memory that Chromium.^[2][3]

Advantages

Mozilla Firefox is a fast, stable browser with plenty of options. As a product of Mozilla's sizable open source community, it is unlikely to contain any major bugs. It also can be customized with a variety of addons from Mozilla's library. Third party plugins may also be added to the browser. Firefox has also been showing an interest in security lately. They have been making security-motivated changes, some of which are not found in Chromium and other competitors.
With the development of the new "quantum" engine, this browser has apparently improved its performance significantly.^[3]

Disadvantages

When compared to Chromium, this browser has historically failed to perform quite as quickly. However, the new engine has helped to eliminate this deficiency. Although addons are plentiful and easy to create, they must be frequently updated, or the browser will disable them. Additionally, Mozilla has taken a very liberal political stance, which some find hard to agree with. For these reasons, some opt for forks of Firefox.

History

Firefox was originally developed as an offshoot of the Mozilla Browser project, developed by Netscape, as a lightweight version of the software. The original Mozilla browser was extremely feature rich, including such things as an HTML editor, which created a large and correspondingly slow piece of software. Firefox has gone through several name changes, all due to existing trademarks. It was originally named Phoenix, then Firebird and finally Firefox.

Market penetration

Since its original release in 2002, Firefox had a continued increase in the market share of web browsers until 2009, then a small decline due to competition from Google Chrome. Exact numbers are difficult to determine, but as of November 2012 worldwide, Firefox had a 24% share,^[4] and as of November 2012, 28.5% in Europe.^[5] By spring 2016, however, the browser's market share had dropped off to just over 15%.^[6]

The browser is officially supported in over 70 languages,^[7] and is available for the different versions of Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. Unofficial builds are available for Sun Microsystems Solaris, BSD, and other operating systems.

Political Stance and boycotts of the Mozilla browser

The Mozilla Foundation, which develops the web browser, supports the homosexual agenda. After CEO Brendan Eich, the creator of the programming language javascript,^[8] was exposed as opposing same-sex "marriage" in California's Proposition 8 campaign, he was forced to resign.^[9] He held the same exact view as the Obama did nevertheless, selective outrage is the liberal way.

Boycotts of the Mozilla browser

Some conservatives/libertarians are encouraging people to uninstall Firefox and instead use open-source web browsers based on Mozilla Firefox or use other browser alternatives.^[10][11] For example, Vox Day is encourage people to migrate to the Pale Moon browser which is based on the Mozilla Firefox browser and Dennis Prager encouraged people to uninstall Firefox.^[12]

There are other browsers based on Firefox such as the Comodo IceDragon browser and the Waterfox browser (which is reportedly faster than the Firefox browser).^[13][14] The "Brave" web browser is also reportedly faster than the Firefox browser by about 27%^[15] (although this report may be have become obsolete with Mozilla's release of Quantum).

See also

• Tails (operating system) and TOR Firefox browser encryption for Internet anonymity to protect unalienable rights

References

1. ↑ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/09/firefox-quantum-developer-edition-fastest-firefox-ever/
2. ↑ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/09/26/firefox-quantum-beta-developer-edition
4. ↑ Browser market share
5. ↑ AT Internet Institute - Article
6. ↑ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-microsoft-internet-explorer-edge-browsers-first-time-statcounter/
7. ↑ Firefox International Versions
8. ↑ http://www.quirksmode.org/js/intro.html
9. ↑ Ashburn, Lauren. "Mozilla CEO out for Opposing Gay Marriage." Fox News. FOX News Network, 3 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Jan. 2015. <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/03/mozilla-ceo-out-for-opposing-gay-marriage>.
10. ↑ Why Brendan Eich has to got
11. ↑ Uninstall Firefox
12. ↑ Why Brendan Eich has to got
    • Under a Pale Moon
    • Fumigating the Firefox
    • Uninstall Firefox
13. ↑ Version 34.0 of faster 64-bit version of Firefox released
14. ↑ Waterfox browser website
15. ↑ [1]

External links

• Firefox Home Page
• Programming Center
• Mozilla Foundation
• Firefox Nightly (testing builds)