Version history mozilla. Firefox browser history. Firefox: predictions for the future

• Audio / video .ogg files as well as .pdf files are now processed by Firefox if no application is specified for them (Windows only);
• A web search form has been added to the new tab page;
• Implemented and enabled WebVTT;
• Support for variables in CSS blocks. Now you can create variables with the "-" prefix (previously offered "var-") and the ability to use them later using the var () statement .;
• CSP 1.1 nonce-source and hash-source are enabled by default;
• Dialogues raised by the onbeforeunload event no longer block access to the rest of the browser;
• Developer tools: Added Eyedropper tool to the color picker;
• Developer Tools: Editable Box Model;
• Developer Tools: Improved Code Editor;
• Developer tools: Console stack trace;
• Developer tools: Copy as cURL;
• Developer tools: Styling console logs;
• Developer tools: Add-ons debugger;
• Developer Tools: Canvas Debugger;
• Fixed search for partially selected link text from the context menu.

• Added the ability to refresh the page of synchronized tabs by dragging from top to bottom;
• Added support for rearranging panels on the home page (about: home);
• Integration of the Generational Garbage Collector, which allows you to achieve more high performance and reduce memory consumption in a situation of storing a large number of objects that live for a short time;
• The optimization module OdinMonkey for code using the asm.js style uses a new additional level of optimization (backtracking allocator), which allows for better generation of machine instructions during JIT work. The negative side the new method is an increase in compilation time and a higher resource intensity due to more complex methods for finding an optimal solution, therefore this method not used by default for regular code, but quite applicable for Asm.js. In the octane-zlib test, the inclusion of a new optimization level allowed us to increase performance from 45,000 to 50,000 points;
• The new mozilla :: pkix library has been used to validate digital certificates. The new library is more reliable by checking all available certificate verification chains. The library code is written in C ++ and is only 4167 lines, which greatly simplifies its maintenance (the previous library was unnecessarily complicated and consisted of 81865 lines due to the fact that it was translated from Java to C);
• Partially implemented OpenType MATH table (section 6.3.6), more details in the documentation on mathematical fonts and MathML Torture Test;
• Added translations into the following languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu;
• Removed CAPS infrastructure for defining site specific permissions (via capability.policy. * Parameters). In particular, trying to use this functionality to provide clipboard access will no longer work. The only exception is the checkloaduri permission, which can still be used as before to allow sites to load URIs of type file: //;
• Firefox Hub APIs
• Implemented and enabled WebVTT;
• Support for variables in CSS blocks. Now you can create variables with the "-" prefix (previously offered "var-") and the ability to use them later using the var () statement;
• The navigator.sendBeacon interface is enabled by default, for asynchronous transfer small chunks of data from the browser to the server;
• For arrays, support for the Array.prototype.fill () method is added, designed to fill the entire array or part of its elements with a certain value;
• New built-in Object.setPrototypeOf ();
• CSP 1.1 nonce-source and hash-source are enabled by default.

They call him "Ognelis", "FF" and "Mozilla". Some users believe browser Mozilla Firefox the worst thing ever created, citing a lot of security holes and a program's love of fatal bugs as arguments. The opposing side calls this browser ideal, putting it on a par with the best programs for and surfing in. A hard-to-explain psychological effect has long been noticed: as soon as a person works in Firefox for a while, he falls in love with it forever. Becoming his adherent, admirer and adept.

Today, the Internet browser Mozilla Firefox ranks third in the world in popularity among all and a confident first place in the "Free Software" category.

In addition, there are countries where Firefox is more popular than worldwide. So, let's say, Firefox is the second in Russia, and in Germany it is the first. It is about what preceded such a deafening glory of this program that we will talk with you today.

The making of Firefox. Start

And the history of Firefox began when Netscape Communications really wanted to create a browser that would grab a piece of the pie from the incredibly popular Internet Explorer... Yes, yes, I was not mistaken, that's right: today in limbo and animated only by attempts, the IE browser at the end of the 20th century was extremely, downright fantastic, popular.

It was only natural that other companies did everything to replicate this success. Yes, let's face it, the Netscape 5 browser completely failed its fight with Internet Explorer in 1998, but it did not disappear without a trace - it was on its "remains" that the creation began new program for surfing the web. Rather, the program, in fact, was written, as it is called "from scratch", from Netscape 5 were taken only some ideas and pieces of open program code... At the heart of the modern Firefox browser is the freely portable Gecko engine.

Until 2002, the development of the new browser was neither shaky nor shaky. As often happens, the crisis became the motivational kick for intensive work on the project. In 2002, AOL Time Warner Corporation, which owned Netscape Communications, decided to close the unprofitable project. However, the development of the new browser was not turned down, but allocated into a separate structure of the Mozilla Foundation.

By the way, AOL Time Warner Corporation helped the new company a lot at the initial stage, providing it with computers, giving some initial funds and transferring intellectual property rights.

The making of Firefox. Continuation

Since the moment of gaining independence, the development of the project began to gain momentum. Already on September 23, 2002, the first version 0.1 was released. Frankly, the first release did not attract the attention of either the general public or specialists. Moreover, the program was so "raw" that many changes were made by the developers literally at full speed, at the time of using the program. Of course, this subsequently led to some compatibility problems. And yet a start was made: the browser saw the light of day and began to actively develop.

New date in history mozilla browser Firefox can be safely considered November 9, 2004. On this day, the first stable version 1.0 was released. Sorry for the clichés, but the appearance of this version in its effect was akin to the effect of an exploding bomb. Users loved the new browser so much that in just a year, more than 100 million people installed it. Moreover, 25 million firefox downloads scored in the first 100 days after the program was posted on the Internet. Impressive numbers.

Then there were versions 1.5 (2005); 2.0 (2006); 3.0 (2008); 4.0 (2011) and so on. Each of the versions improved something, optimized it, and pulled new OS and additional functions into its orbit. As of March 2014, the Firefox browser has already 27 stable versions, each of which only increased the army of fans of the program.

And interestingly, the name Firefox was far from the first. Few people know now, but initially the browser was called Phoenix, then Firebird, and only after both of these names were rejected due to copyright infringement by the developers, and the well-known to all appeared a cute fire fox for the Internet community. Which, by the way, is not a fox at all, but a red panda. At least, this is exactly what the Chinese think, from whose language the name is literally translated.

Firefox creators

To date, both Mozilla Foundation employees and volunteers from around the world are working to maintain the functionality and expand the capabilities of the browser. And yet the browser has its "fathers", which are considered to be the creators of Firefox. There are only two of them - Blake Aaron Ross and Dave Hewitt. I think they deserve a few words.

I tried to remember interesting Factsthat concern the Firefox browser:

Firefox: predictions for the future

Today, when enormous funds are spinning in the IT sphere, every successful decision is akin to opening a real gold mine. And Firefox is no exception in this case. For several years now, intensive work has been carried out to popularize and integrate it with mobile devices... The volume of special extensions available for browser owners is growing. Media seeding is also underway, thanks to which the growth in popularity of Mozilla Firefox is constantly increasing.

In general, if you follow the statistics of downloads, we can conclude that very soon we will have another "redistribution of spheres of influence." Considering the fact that Firefox owners rarely switch to other web surfing systems, we can expect a significant jump in the popularity of this really very unusual and distinctive browser.

• Audio / video .ogg files as well as .pdf files are now processed by Firefox if no application is specified for them (Windows only);
• A web search form has been added to the new tab page;
• Implemented and enabled WebVTT;
• Support for variables in CSS blocks. Now you can create variables with the "-" prefix (previously offered "var-") and the ability to use them later using the var () statement .;
• CSP 1.1 nonce-source and hash-source are enabled by default;
• Dialogues raised by the onbeforeunload event no longer block access to the rest of the browser;
• Developer tools: Added Eyedropper tool to the color picker;
• Developer Tools: Editable Box Model;
• Developer Tools: Improved Code Editor;
• Developer tools: Console stack trace;
• Developer tools: Copy as cURL;
• Developer tools: Styling console logs;
• Developer tools: Add-ons debugger;
• Developer Tools: Canvas Debugger;
• Fixed search for partially selected link text from the context menu.

• Added the ability to refresh the page of synchronized tabs by dragging from top to bottom;
• Added support for rearranging panels on the home page (about: home);
• Integration of the Generational Garbage Collector, which allows you to achieve higher performance and reduce memory consumption in a situation of storing a large number of objects that live for a short time;
• The optimization module OdinMonkey for code using the asm.js style uses a new additional level of optimization (backtracking allocator), which allows for better generation of machine instructions during JIT work. The negative side of the new method is increased compilation time and higher resource intensity due to more complex methods for finding an optimal solution, therefore this method is not used by default for regular code, but is quite applicable for Asm.js. In the octane-zlib test, the inclusion of a new optimization level allowed us to increase performance from 45,000 to 50,000 points;
• The new mozilla :: pkix library has been used to validate digital certificates. The new library is more reliable by checking all available certificate verification chains. The library code is written in C ++ and is only 4167 lines, which greatly simplifies its maintenance (the previous library was unnecessarily complicated and consisted of 81865 lines due to the fact that it was translated from Java to C);
• Partially implemented OpenType MATH table (section 6.3.6), more details in the documentation on mathematical fonts and MathML Torture Test;
• Added translations into the following languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu;
• Removed CAPS infrastructure for defining site specific permissions (via capability.policy. * Parameters). In particular, trying to use this functionality to provide clipboard access will no longer work. The only exception is the checkloaduri permission, which can still be used as before to allow sites to load URIs of type file: //;
• Firefox Hub APIs
• Implemented and enabled WebVTT;
• Support for variables in CSS blocks. Now you can create variables with the "-" prefix (previously offered "var-") and the ability to use them later using the var () statement;
• By default, support for the navigator.sendBeacon interface is enabled, for asynchronous transmission of small portions of data from the browser to the server;
• For arrays, support for the Array.prototype.fill () method is added, designed to fill the entire array or part of its elements with a certain value;
• New built-in Object.setPrototypeOf ();
• CSP 1.1 nonce-source and hash-source are enabled by default.

The browser was originally called "Phoenix". After some time, the browser was renamed to "Firebird" ("Firebird") due to a conflict of trademarks, but this name was later changed to "Firefox" for a similar reason. However, Firefox turned out to be a trademark of The Charlton Company in the UK, which was reflected in the About dialog.

Firefox ("fire fox") is a literal translation from a whale, pinyin hǔo hú, which the Chinese sometimes call the red fox and the red panda, after which, according to the developers, the browser is named. Firefox is preferably abbreviated as "Fx" or "fx" rather than "FF" or "FX".

Often in everyday life, the browser is mistakenly called "Mozilla".

The Firefox project was started by Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt when they were at AOL Time Warner's Netscape Communications. Since the closure of Netscape Communications, the entire Mozilla project has been run by the then-created Mozilla Foundation, which owns the Mozilla Firefox trademarks.

Firefox was spun off from the Mozilla Application Suite, which code was created from scratch by the Mozilla Organization instead of Netscape Communicator 5 code, part of which was released under the free Mozilla Public License after being defeated in the browser war.

The browser uses the free, portable Gecko engine, built with open standards in mind. Firefox is developed by employees at its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation, and by volunteers around the world.

Version history:

Firefox 1.0

Firefox 1.0 (codenamed "Phoenix") was the direct heir to Mozilla Suite 1.7 (powered by Gecko 1.7 engine) and had a lot in common with it in user interface - for example, in the settings window, the buttons were not located horizontally (as now), but vertically, in the Mozilla tradition. Among the improvements - the extension manager, the ability to automatically update by downloading the new version of the installer.

The 1.0.x branch was the only one (at the moment) in which the developers made serious changes to the API right on the go, during its active use, which led to partial incompatibility of extensions for Fx 1.0.3 with versions 1.0.4-1.0.8

At the moment it is no longer supported, has a significant number of unpatched security holes and is outdated.

Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 (codenamed Deer Park) was released on November 29 (according to other sources November 30) 2005, updates were regularly released for a year and a half.

Improvements in version 1.5:

Built-in automatic update system.
Faster and better navigation.
Sorting of tabs using the Drag and drop mechanism.
Improved pop-up blocker.
Clear Private Data function to delete personal information.

May 31, Firefox 1.5.0.12 and Firefox 2.0.0.4 became available to the general public via the system automatic updates... These are standard security and stability updates. Also 1.5.0.12 is the final version of the 1.5 branch. Firefox 1.5.0.12 already contains an improved update mechanism that will allow users to "migrate" to Firefox 2 by installing a special patch. The upgrade to 2.x branch was offered to users on June 28, 2007.

Firefox 2

Firefox 2.0 (codenamed "Bon Echo") was released on October 25, 2006. In the first day since the official release of the browser, it was downloaded more than 2 million times. It is built on top of the improved Firefox 1.5 engine - Gecko 1.8.1. It has improved support for JavaScript, SVG, XML, slightly redesigned the browser, introduced a phishing protection system developed by by Google... The original plan was to add a modern bookmarking system called Places, but due to difficulties in debugging it, it was only included in Firefox 3.0 (June 2008). Added spell checker for text in web forms.

Firefox 3

On April 2, 2008, a completely stable version of Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 was released, which was included in Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9.

In beta versions, the default format of the auto-completion drop-down list has been changed, and the auto-completion algorithm has been improved. By beta 4, the dependence of the position of the result on what the user selects by entering a certain search string has been implemented.

Added the ability to use system settings access through a proxy server ($ http_proxy environment variable) on Linux platform, and a radio button for selecting it in the corresponding dialog, which is displayed only if the variable is set.

The DOM Inspector extension has been removed from the standard delivery. It is now available in add-ons.

On May 16, the first candidate for releases was released - Firefox 3.0 RC1, which has already been downloaded by over 1.5 million people. It found 10 serious errors (including three critical errors). The final version was supposed to be released only after fixing all the errors.

One of these "bugs" is actually a combination of the Linux fsync implementation, the use of fsync in SQLite version 3.5.8, and the impact of multiple Firefox builds requiring this version of SQlite just before 3.0 RC1.

"This assembly has reduced the amount of memory used during runtime and significantly improved performance," said Mozilla VP Mike Belzner. RC2 added automatic memory cycle counters, systems for defragmenting memory, and also changed about a hundred code fragments (through which memory leaks occurred). Also, the browser received additional security mechanisms when working with protected web pages. Bookmarks, web history, cookies and passwords are now stored in a secure format. The JavaScript engine was revised.

Release Candidate 3 has been released. This version fixes the browser freeze error in the operating room. mac system OS X 10.5.3, Windows and Linux versions remain unchanged.

Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008, based on the Gecko 1.9 platform, which has been in development for the last 34 months. The new platform includes over 15,000 changes to improve performance, stability and fidelity of content, and simplify and improve code. Leveraging the new platform has made Firefox 3 safer, easier to use, and more customizable, with many different options for website developers and add-ons for Firefox.

Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5 is the next stable release, which was released on June 30, 2009. The codename is Shiretoko. Gecko version is 1.9.1.

This release of Firefox came out under version 3.5, not 3.1 as originally planned.

This decision was made to more accurately highlight the numerous changes made since the release of Firefox 3.0 last summer. This includes a number of changes to tab management, fixes for web standards compatibility, a heavily redesigned JavaScript engine, and privacy improvements, including a new private mode that allows users to delete all personal data at the end of a session.

Besides, in final version browser logo has changed to a new one. The image is largely the same, except for the fox's tail, which symbolizes the fire engulfing the planet Mozilla.

Firefox 3.6

Firefox 3.6 is the next stable release, released on January 21, 2010. The code name is Namoroka. Gecko version is 1.9.2.

During preliminary testing, the release was referred to as version 3.2.

The main features of Firefox 3.6 are:

Performance improvements: Reduce browser startup and tab opening times, and increase responsiveness when executing user commands.

Support for lightweight themes that do not require a browser restart (Personas), tighter integration with Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.6, fixes in the "smart" address bar and autocomplete form.

Firefox 4.0

A version following Firefox 3.6. It was decided to release it under version 4.0, and not 3.7, as planned at the alpha testing stage. Firefox 4.0 will be released in early 2011.

Numerous interface fixes became one of the key development directions. For example, it is planned to place the tab bar in the window frame, get rid of the status bar, and redesign the add-on manager. Grouping capability will also be added open tabs.

The basic delivery of the browser will include the Firefox Sync extension, which will allow users to synchronize their bookmarks, open tabs list, history and saved passwords between multiple computers and mobile phones.

In addition, Firefox 4.0 will include the new Jägermonkey JavaScript engine, which will increase the speed of JavaScript code execution several times.