Five years ago on this date, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released to the public. The browser, with the support of search engine giant Google, has emerged from an experimental branch of the Mozilla project to one of the world’s most popular web browser, killing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which is currently still the top browser, although it’s losing its dominance to new comers like Google Chrome. With over 1 billion downloads and 330 million monthly users, I believe Firefox will ‘rule’ the browser market by the time it celebrates its 10th anniversary.
Originally an experimental branch of the Mozilla project, a new web browser was launched on November 9, 2004: Firefox 1.0. Its aim was to reduce Mozilla’s bloat (if you remember those early days, the Mozilla Suite consisted of a web browser, mail client, news reader, irc client; it even had a web page creator called Mozilla Composer), and it was an instant hit among users and developers alike.
Five years later, and Firefox holds a quarter of the browser market, and while technically not being the most popular (Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still clings to that honor), it’s definitely the most prominent browser, with thousands of plugins (add-ons, they’re called), a busy developer community, and over 330 million users.
As for the future, Christopher Blizzard over at hacks.mozilla.org has some idea about that; it can be summed up in three words: privacy, video, and mobile. From the blog post:
“Over the next five years everyone can expect that the browser should take part in a few new areas – to act as the user agent it should be. Issues around data, privacy and identity loom large. You will see the values of Mozilla’s public benefit mission reflected in our product choices in these areas to make users safer and help them understand what it means to share data with web sites.
Expect to see big changes in the video space. HTML5-based video and open video codecs are starting to appear on the web as web developers make individual choices to support a standards-based, royalty-free approach. Expect to see changes in the expectations around the licensing of codecs.
And over the next five years mobile will play an increasingly important role in our lives, and in the future of the web. The decisions of users, carriers, governments and the people who build phones will have far-reaching effects on this new extension to the Internet and how people will access information for decades to come.”
Mozilla plans to celebrate this milestone by throwing parties (oh no, not that again) around the world. The campaign is called “Light the World with Firefox”, and it will include shining the Firefox logo in cities such as Paris, Tokyo, Rome and San Francisco. Find out more at www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/en-US/.
Come back with me to the turn of the century, circa 1996. Your humble narrator was working for campus police at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, creating FileMaker databases for their police reports. It wasn’t uncommon then to see DOS machines sitting beside Windows 95 machines and the web was a primitive and strange thing. There were only two browsers of note, Netscape and Internet Explorer, and firing either up was neither particularly comfortable or interesting. But, hidden deep behind Netscape’s bland carapace, was Mozilla. When you typed “about:mozilla” in the Netscape address bar, for example, you got:
And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.
from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10
Pretty badass stuff, especially when most websites were dedicated to kittens and burgeoning corporate identity. I was hooked instantly. This was the browser for me and it slowly became the browser for everyone with self-respect and a brain.
Fast forward to 2004: Mozilla and Netscape were on the rocks and it looked like the browser wars had been won. IE was the victor. In order to combat bloat and “feature creep,” however, a ragtag team of coders led by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross built something they called “Phoenix,” then “Firebird,” then, on November 9, 2004, Firefox 1.0 was born. This turned into the Mozilla suite – Firefox and Thunderbird – were born.
On this, the fifth anniversary of that momentous occasion, let’s all tip out a little Jolt for Netscape and toast to the future of Firefox, the best browser in the world. Best of all, the book of Mozilla is still being written and any time you type ‘about:mozilla’ into Firefox you get a red screen and a potent reminder of the early days of the Internet.
Happy birthday, Firefox.
Firefox is the best browser according to me
I love you Firefox.
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