How Firefox Dominates The Browser Industry
The ignition of project Mozilla dates back to mid 1990's. It all started when Netscape lost the battle with Microsoft over bundling of Internet Explorer browser into Windows. This event marked the end of dominance of Netscape Navigator and it soon started to lose its market share to IE. Netscape released its version 4 in the year 1997 but it was nothing as compared to IE4. It was high time for Netscape to bring something special which could outperform the Microsoft Internet Explorer if they even wish to turn tables around. So, Netscape announced the Mozilla Project in 1998 in which Netscape's source code was thrown open for developer use. And within six years, a web browser was developed which was not only fast, lightweight but also performed every function better than IE. Yes, this browser is none other than Firefox, previously known as Firebird.
Internet Explorer has a bad reputation for security holes that seem to persist, even after threats are made aware of by Microsoft. This is in comparison to Mozilla Firefox, which is considered to be one of the most secure browsers available. Part of this feat is attributed to the fact that Mozilla Firefox does not use Active X components, which have widely been known to create browser vulnerabilities in competitors such as Internet Explorer. But the security doesn't stop there- as Firefox has been able to give updates as soon as security holes are found compared to the many months or years it would take Microsoft.
Those who are looking to save some disk space should also opt for Mozilla Firefox, as it comes it at a small 4.9 megabytes in size. This is compared to the 80 megabytes that Internet Explorer requires for its bulky code- of which is unnecessarily large.
The Acid 2 test is a highly praised test that measures how well an Internet browser can display a webpage. Oddly enough, both Firefox and Internet Explorer fail this test respectively. But it should be noted that Firefox obtains a much higher score than Internet Explorer, who has an embarrassing low grade in browser rendering.
An interesting feature of Firefox is the installation of themes and extensions which makes the browser user customized, a feature which is absent in IE. These themes and extensions are available at the Mozilla and other web developers Websites. The extensions can be added to perform a specific operation for the users such as adblock, Gmail notifier, etc.
Firefox has long been given popularity due to the simple fact that it supports tabbed browsing. Some versions of Internet Explorer allow for this feat, but Internet Explorer doesn't handle memory usage properly, and lagging is a common repercussion. Opera is another example of a browser that uses tabbed browsing, but expands on the idea by offering thumbnail previews.
One of the best known features of Firefox 2 is the fact that it offers the session restore ability. Far too often, browsers can crash for reasons beyond the developers. When and if this happens, users will lose everything they were doing. But with session restore, a user can restart a session that saved all URL data being browsed, as well as other helpful information that can make a browser crash much less irritating and counter productive to one's goals.
The future development of Firefox versions has already been started and version 3 which is likely to pass Acid 2 test is expected to release in June 2008. With this release Firefox is set to show doors to IE legacy.
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