Mozilla Firefox (known simply as Firefox) is a free and open-source[17] web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is available for Windows,OS X and Linux operating systems, with its mobile versions available forAndroid and Firefox OS. It uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards.[18]
Firefox was created in 2002, under the name "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who wanted a standalone browser rather than theMozilla Application Suite bundle. Even during its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular by its testers and was praised for its speed, security and add-ons compared with Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released in November 2004,[19] and was highly successful with 60 million downloads within nine months, which was the first time that Internet Explorer's dominance was challenged.[20] Firefox is considered the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator,[21] as the Mozilla Foundation was created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL.[22]
As of July 2015, Firefox has between 12% and 19% of worldwide usageas a "desktop" browser, making it, per different sources, the third most popular web browser.[23][24][25][26] Still, the browser is most popular in some countries, as a desktop browser,[27][28] such as Indonesia andGermany at 48%,[29] 43%[30] of the market share, respectively. According to Mozilla, as of December 2014, there are half a billion Firefox users around the world.[31]
Contents
[hide]- 1 History
- 2 Features
- 3 Release history
- 4 System requirements
- 5 Licensing
- 6 Trademark and logo
- 7 Promotion
- 8 Performance
- 9 Market adoption
- 10 See also
- 11 References
- 12 Further reading
- 13 External links
Developer(s) Mozilla Foundation and contributors
Mozilla CorporationInitial release September 23, 2002 Stable release ESR 38.2.0 (August 11, 2015[2]) [±] Preview release - Beta
- Developer Edition
- Nightly
Development status Active Written in C++,[7] JavaScript,[8] C, CSS,[9]XUL, XBL Operating system Windows, OS X, Linux,Android,[10] Firefox OS Engines Gecko, SpiderMonkey Size Available in 79 languages[14] Type Web browser
Feed reader
Mobile web browserLicense MPL 2.0[15][16] Website mozilla .org /firefox Standard(s) HTML5, CSS3, RSS, Atom