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78-531: A download manager manages files being downloaded from the internet. Download managers break down files into multiple chunks for faster download speeds and allocate resources for downloading multiple items simultaneously. Failed downloads can also be restarted from a download manager. Download managers may be separate programs or may be built into web browsers or other programs, such as Firefox 's and Telegram 's built-in download managers. Download managers are occasionally used to spread malware or advertisements onto

156-476: A File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client for browsing file servers, the ability to block images from individual domains (until version 72), a 3D page inspector (versions 11 to 46), tab grouping (until version 44), and the ability to add customized extra toolbars (until version 28). Functions can be added through add-ons created by third-party developers . Add-ons are primarily coded using an HTML , CSS , JavaScript , with API known as WebExtensions , which

234-537: A Metro-style version of Firefox, optimized for touchscreen use, on the "Aurora" release channel. However, on March 14, 2014, Mozilla cancelled the project because of a lack of user adoption. In March 2017, Firefox 52 ESR, the last version of the browser for Windows XP and Windows Vista , was released. Support for Firefox 52 ESR ended in June 2018. Traditionally, installing the Windows version of Firefox entails visiting

312-522: A blacklist and whitelist of sites that will be used in the filter. Version 23, released in August 2013, followed the lead of its competitors by blocking iframe , stylesheet, and script resources served from non-HTTPS servers embedded on HTTPS pages by default. Additionally, JavaScript could also no longer be disabled through Firefox's preferences, and JavaScript was automatically re-enabled for users who upgraded to 23 or higher with it disabled. The change

390-425: A configuration menu at about:config for power users , and location-aware browsing (also known as " geolocation ") based on a Google service. Firefox has an integrated search system which uses Google by default in most markets. DNS over HTTPS is another feature whose default behaviour is determined geographically. Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as

468-658: A custom keyword, a user could type "google apple" into the address bar and be redirected to the results of a Google search for "apple". For the mail and newsgroup component, the built-in Bayesian e-mail spam filter could effectively filter out unwanted e-mail spam after a period of training. Mozilla introduced the extension model , which was expanded and improved by Firefox and Thunderbird. Through extensions (installed via XPInstall modules), users might activate new features, such as mouse gestures , advertisement blocking, proxy server switching, and debugging tools . One can view

546-594: A new project called Servo to write a completely new and experimental browser engine utilizing memory safe techniques written in Rust . In 2018, Mozilla opted to integrate parts of the Servo project into the Gecko engine in a project codenamed the Quantum project. The project completely overhauled Firefox's page rendering code resulting in performance and stability gains while also improving

624-545: A new theme, users could customize its interface by adding and removing some of its buttons and toolbars. Additionally, Mozilla stored most of its preferences in a list that users could access by typing about:config in the address bar. Some preferences were only available through it, like turning on bookmark icons. The Mozilla Foundation took pride in Mozilla's compliance with existing standards, especially W3C Web standards. Mozilla had extensive support for most basic standards at

702-427: A nickname of the red panda , which became the mascot for the newly named project. For the abbreviation of Firefox, Mozilla prefers Fx or fx, although it is often abbreviated as FF . The Firefox project went through many versions before version 1.0 and had already gained a great deal of acclaim from numerous media outlets, such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal . Among Firefox's popular features were

780-470: A profile might be used on multiple platforms, as long as all of the platforms could access the profile (e.g., the profile was stored on a FAT32 partition accessible from both Windows and Linux). This functionality was useful for users who dual-boot their machines. However, it might occasionally cause problems, especially with extensions. Mozilla came with three Web development tools — a DOM Inspector , Venkman and JavaScript Console . The DOM Inspector

858-497: A randomized device ID to prevent services from uniquely identifying the device for tracking purposes. The DRM module, once it has been downloaded, is enabled, and disabled in the same manner as other plug-ins . Since version 47, "Google's Widevine CDM on Windows and Mac OS X so streaming services like Amazon Video can switch from Silverlight to encrypted HTML5 video" is also supported. Mozilla justified its partnership with Adobe and Google by stating: Firefox downloads and enables

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936-456: A trademark claim from Phoenix Technologies . The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird database software project. The Mozilla Foundation reassured them that the browser would always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion. After further pressure, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox on February 9, 2004. The name Firefox was said to be derived from

1014-431: A user could simply begin typing a word while viewing a Web page, and the browser automatically searched for it and highlighted the first instance found. As the user typed more of the word, the browser refined its search. Additionally, Mozilla supported the "custom keyword" feature. This feature allowed users to access their bookmarks from the location bar using keywords (and an optional query parameter). For example, using

1092-479: A user's computer. For example, the download page for Free Download Manager was hacked and used to spread malware on Linux devices from 2020 to 2022. Other download managers have been noted to contain advertisements, be identified as malware by antivirus software , or attempt to install unwanted software during installation. This article related to a type of software is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Firefox Mozilla Firefox

1170-662: A web page used too many resources, the entire Firefox process would hang or crash, affecting all tabs. Additionally, any exploit could easily access system resources, including user files. Between 2008 and 2012, most browsers shifted to a multiprocess architecture, isolating high-risk processes like rendering, media, GPU, and networking. However, Firefox was slower to adopt this change. It wasn't until 2015 that Firefox started its Electrolysis (e10s) project to implement sandboxing across multiple components. This rewrite relied on interprocess communication using Chromium 's interprocess communication library and placed various component including

1248-503: A whole; its usage then declined in competition with Google Chrome . As of July 2024 , according to StatCounter , it had a 6.5% usage share on traditional PCs (i.e. as a desktop browser), making it the fourth-most popular PC web browser after Google Chrome (65%), Microsoft Edge (13%), and Safari (9.0%). The project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt , Joe Hewitt , and Blake Ross . They believed

1326-447: Is 0, DoH is disabled; 1 activates DoH in addition to unencrypted DNS; 2 causes DoH to be used before unencrypted DNS; to use only DoH, the value must be 3. By setting network.trr.uri to the URL, special Cloudflare servers will be activated. Mozilla has a privacy agreement with this server host that restricts their collection of information about incoming DNS requests. On May 21, 2019, Firefox

1404-619: Is a free and open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation . It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. Firefox is available for Windows 10 and later versions of Windows , macOS , and Linux . Its unofficial ports are available for various Unix and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD , OpenBSD , NetBSD , and other platforms. It

1482-461: Is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite . Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation , before their acquisition by AOL . It was based on the source code of Netscape Communicator . The development was spearheaded by the Mozilla Organization from 1998 to 2003, and by the Mozilla Foundation from 2003 to 2006. The project has been superseded by

1560-513: Is also available for Android and iOS . However, as with all other iOS web browsers, the iOS version uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko due to platform requirements. An optimized version is also available on the Amazon Fire TV as one of the two main browsers available with Amazon's Silk Browser . Firefox is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator , as the Mozilla community

1638-432: Is available for Android (formerly Firefox for mobile, it also ran on Maemo , MeeGo and Firefox OS ) and Firefox for iOS is available for iOS. Smartphones that support Linux but not Android, or iOS apps can also run Firefox in its desktop version, for example using postmarketOS . Notes Firefox source code may be compiled for various operating systems; however, officially distributed binaries are provided for

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1716-629: Is designed to be compatible with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extension systems. Firefox previously supported add-ons using the XUL and XPCOM APIs, which allowed them to directly access and manipulate much of the browser's internal functionality. As compatibility was not included in the multi-process architecture, XUL add-ons have been deemed Legacy add-ons and are no longer supported on Firefox 57 "Quantum" and newer. Mozilla has occasionally installed extensions for users without their permission. This happened in 2017 when an extension designed to promote

1794-722: Is designed to be similar to Chrome and other recent browsers. Firefox 57, which was released in November 2017, was the first version to contain enhancements from Quantum, and has thus been named Firefox Quantum . A Mozilla executive stated that Quantum was the "biggest update" to the browser since version 1.0. Unresponsive and crashing pages only affect other pages loaded within the same process. While Chrome uses separate processes for each loaded tab, Firefox distributes tabs over four processes by default (since Quantum), in order to balance memory consumption and performance. The process count can be adjusted, where more processes increase performance at

1872-404: Is entered. Firefox now supports HTTP/2. In February 2013, plans were announced for Firefox 22 to disable third-party cookies by default. However, the introduction of the feature was then delayed so Mozilla developers could "collect and analyze data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies." Mozilla also collaborated with Stanford University 's "Cookie Clearinghouse" project to develop

1950-673: The Acid3 test fully because they believed that the SVG fonts part of the test had become outdated and irrelevant, due to WOFF being agreed upon as a standard by all major browser makers. Because the SVG font tests were removed from the Acid3 test in September 2011, Firefox 4 and greater scored 100/100. Firefox also implements "Safe Browsing," a proprietary protocol from Google used to exchange data related with phishing and malware protection. Firefox supports

2028-567: The SeaMonkey Internet suite (SeaMonkey was the original code name for the project), a community-driven Internet suite that is based on the same source code, and continues to be developed with the newer Mozilla codebase. The Mozilla Suite was composed of several main programs: Navigator (a Web browser ), Communicator ( Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups ), a Web page developer ( Mozilla Composer ), an IRC client ( ChatZilla ) and an electronic address book. Also included were tools to synchronize

2106-551: The WHATWG such as client-side storage, and the canvas element . These standards are implemented through the Gecko layout engine, and SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. Firefox 4 was the first release to introduce significant HTML5 and CSS3 support. Firefox has passed the Acid2 standards-compliance test since version 3.0. Mozilla had originally stated that they did not intend for Firefox to pass

2184-474: The Acid2 test. The mail and newsgroup supported POP and IMAP. It also supported LDAP address completion. Both reading and writing of HTML e-mails were supported. Mail files were stored in mbox format, and were thus portable. The first version of the suite, i.e., the one that formed the basis of Netscape 6 , did not support the blink element , thus making it the only Netscape/Mozilla browser that has not supported

2262-675: The Adobe Primetime and Google Widevine CDMs by default to give users a smooth experience on sites that require DRM. Each CDM runs in a separate container called a sandbox and you will be notified when a CDM is in use. You can also disable each CDM and opt-out of future updates and that it is "an important step on Mozilla's roadmap to remove NPAPI plugin support." Upon the introduction of EME support, builds of Firefox on Windows were also introduced that exclude support for EME. The Free Software Foundation and Cory Doctorow condemned Mozilla's decision to support EME. From its inception, Firefox

2340-633: The Error Console or the DOM Inspector , and extensions , such as Firebug and more recently there has been an integration feature with Pocket . Firefox Hello was an implementation of WebRTC , added in October 2014, which allows users of Firefox and other compatible systems to have a video call, with the extra feature of screen and file sharing by sending a link to each other. Firefox Hello was scheduled to be removed in September 2016. Former features include

2418-516: The Firefox website and downloading an installer package, depending on the desired localization and system architecture. In November 2021, Mozilla made Firefox available on Microsoft Store . The Store-distributed package does not interfere with the traditional installation. Mozilla Application Suite The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla , marketed as the Mozilla Suite )

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2496-476: The Mozilla Foundation operated a "bug bounty" scheme: Users who reported a valid critical security bug received a US$ 500 cash reward for each report and a Mozilla T-shirt. The purpose of this "bug bounty" system, according to the Mozilla Foundation, was to "encourage more people to find and report security bugs in our products, so that we can make our products even more secure than they already are". Anyone in

2574-478: The Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird . The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. The nascent browser was originally named Phoenix, after the mythical bird that rose triumphantly from the ashes of its dead predecessor (in this case, from the "ashes" of Netscape Navigator , after it was sidelined by Microsoft Internet Explorer in the " First Browser War "). Phoenix was renamed in 2003 due to

2652-480: The MultiZilla extension, the feature was then implemented directly within the browser. Mozilla also belonged in the group of browsers who early on adopted customizable pop-up blocking, and granular cookie management, including cookie prompts. The browser had a number of features which helped users find information. First, Mozilla had an incremental find feature known as "find as you type". With this feature enabled,

2730-467: The Servo team transferring ownership of the project to the Linux Foundation . When Firefox initially released, it used a custom script permission policy where scripts that were signed by the page could gain access to higher privilege actions such as the ability to set a user's preferences. However, this model was not widely used and was later discontinued by Firefox. Modern day Firefox instead follows

2808-466: The accessibility community" and had not been resolved as of October 2024 . On January 13, 2022, an issue with Firefox's HTTP/3 implementation resulted in a widespread outage for several hours. On September 26, 2023, Firefox 118.0 introduced on-device translation of web page content. On January 23, 2024, along with the release of Firefox 122.0, Mozilla introduced an official APT repository for Debian -based Linux distributions . Features of

2886-650: The announcement of the end of the Netscape Navigator browser and AOL's agreement to use Microsoft 's Internet Explorer browser in future versions of its AOL software. AOL has since announced it will be using Mozilla's Gecko layout engine . According to the Mozilla development roadmap published on April 2, 2003, the Mozilla Organization planned to focus development efforts on the new standalone applications: Phoenix (now known as Mozilla Firefox ) and Minotaur (now known as Mozilla Thunderbird ). To distinguish

2964-462: The application with PalmPilot devices, and several extensions for advanced Web development, including the DOM Inspector , and Venkman (a JavaScript debugger ). Versions 6 and 7 of the Netscape suite were based on the Mozilla Suite. The last official version is 1.7.13, as Mozilla Foundation is currently focusing on the development of Firefox and Thunderbird . The Mozilla Suite is available under

3042-483: The browser or device, and deleted only upon a manual exit. The feature was removed in 2019, purportedly to " streamline the experience ". Firefox implements many web standards , including HTML4 (almost full HTML5 ), XML , XHTML , MathML , SVG 1.1 (full), SVG 2 (partial), CSS (with extensions), ECMAScript ( JavaScript ), DOM , XSLT , XPath , and APNG (Animated PNG ) images with alpha transparency . Firefox also implements standards proposals created by

3120-427: The browser's performance, modernize its architecture, and transition the browser to a multi-process model. These improvements came in the wake of decreasing market share to Google Chrome , as well as concerns that its performance was lapsing in comparison. Despite its improvements, these changes required existing add-ons for Firefox to be made incompatible with newer versions, in favor of a new extension system that

3198-444: The commercial requirements of Netscape 's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite 's software bloat , they created a standalone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. Version 0.1 was released on September 23, 2002. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that it planned to change its focus from

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3276-414: The cost of memory, therefore suitable for computers with larger RAM capacity. On May 3, 2019, the expiry of an intermediate signing certificate on Mozilla servers caused Firefox to automatically disable and lock all browser extensions (add-ons). Mozilla began the roll-out of a fix shortly thereafter, using their Mozilla Studies component. Support for Adobe Flash was dropped on January 6, 2021, with

3354-427: The desktop edition include tabbed browsing , full-screen mode, spell checking , incremental search , smart bookmarks , bookmarking and downloading through drag and drop , a download manager , user profile management, private browsing , bookmark tags, bookmark exporting , offline mode, a screenshot tool, web development tools , a "page info" feature which shows a list of page metadata and multimedia items,

3432-423: The developer tools for testing purposes. Beginning with Firefox 48, all extensions must be signed by Mozilla to be used in release and beta versions of Firefox. Firefox 43 blocked unsigned extensions but allowed enforcement of extension signing to be disabled. All extensions must be submitted to Mozilla Add-ons and be subject to code analysis in order to be signed, although extensions do not have to be listed on

3510-600: The development and release model changed into a "rapid" one; by the end of 2011 the stable release was version 9, and by the end of 2012 it reached version 17. Major redesigns of its graphical user interface occurred on versions 4.0 ( Strata ) in March 2011, 29.0 ( Australis ) in April 2014, 57.0 ( Photon ) in November 2017, and 89.0 ( Proton ) in June 2021. In 2016, Mozilla announced a project known as Quantum , which sought to improve Firefox's Gecko engine and other components to improve

3588-474: The extension system as a ground for experimentation, where one can test new functionalities. Occasionally, an extension, or a part of it, became part of the official product (for example MultiZilla's tabbed browsing feature eventually became part of the standard Mozilla). Mozilla also supported a variety of themes/skins, which changed its appearance. Themes consisted of packages of CSS and image files. The Mozilla Add-ons Web site offered many themes. Beyond adding

3666-474: The following: Firefox 1.0 was released for Windows 95 , as well as Windows NT 4.0 or later. Some users reported the 1.x builds were operable (but not installable) on Windows NT 3.51 . The version 42.0 release includes the first x64 build. It required Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 . Starting from version 49.0, Firefox for Windows requires and uses the SSE2 instruction set. In September 2013, Mozilla released

3744-557: The in-house Pontoon localization platform. The first official release in November 2004 was available in 24 different languages and for 28 locales . In 2019, Mozilla released Project Fluent a localization system that allows translators to be more flexible with their translation than to be constrained in one-to-one translation of strings. As of November 2024 the supported versions of Firefox are available in 97 locales (88 languages). There are desktop versions of Firefox for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux, while Firefox for Android

3822-573: The integrated pop-up blocker , tabbed browsing , and an extension mechanism for adding functionality. Although these features have already been available for some time in other browsers such as the Mozilla Suite and Opera , Firefox was the first of these browsers to have achieved large-scale adoption. Firefox attracted attention as an alternative to Internet Explorer , which had come under fire for its alleged poor program design and insecurity—detractors cite IE's lack of support for certain Web standards, use of

3900-458: The layout engine and front-end related codes, were abandoned shortly thereafter, the Mozilla Organization eventually succeeded in producing a full-featured Internet suite that surpassed Communicator in features, stability and degree of standards compliance. Under the AOL banner, the Mozilla Organization continued development of the browser and management of the Mozilla source until July 2003 when this task

3978-539: The most serious one marked "less critical". From 1998 to 2004, the global usage share of Mozilla grew from a negligible amount to about 3%. Because of the Foundation's plan to switch development focus to standalone applications such as Firefox and Thunderbird, many new features and enhancements were not available for Mozilla. This, combined with the community marketing effort named " Spread Firefox ", drew more and more users away from Mozilla since late 2004, when Firefox 1.0

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4056-461: The notorious tag that Netscape itself created. Later versions of the suite supported the element as well as the marquee tag , originally created by rival Internet Explorer . Mozilla ran on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site supported the following operating systems: Mozilla used the same format to store users' profiles (which contain their personal browser settings) even on different operating systems, so

4134-627: The operating system, was considered a safer alternative since it was less likely to have issues that could completely compromise a computer. This led to a significant increase in Firefox's popularity during the early 2000s as a more secure alternative. Moreover, Firefox was considered to have fewer actively exploitable security vulnerabilities compared to its competitors. In 2006, The Washington Post reported that exploit code for known security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer were available for 284 days compared to only nine days for Firefox before

4212-405: The playback of video content protected by HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), since version 38. For security and privacy reasons, EME is implemented within a wrapper of open-source code that allows execution of a proprietary DRM module by Adobe Systems —Adobe Primetime Content Decryption Module (CDM). CDM runs within a " sandbox " environment to limit its access to the system and provide it

4290-563: The potentially dangerous ActiveX component, and vulnerability to spyware and malware installation. Microsoft responded by releasing Windows XP Service Pack 2, which added several important security features to Internet Explorer 6. Version 1.0 of Firefox was released on November 9, 2004. This was followed by version 1.5 in November 2005, version 2.0 in October 2006, version 3.0 in June 2008, version 3.5 in June 2009, version 3.6 in January 2010, and version 4.0 in March 2011. From version 5 onwards,

4368-476: The problem was fixed. A Symantec study around the same period showed that even though Firefox had a higher number of vulnerabilities, on average vulnerabilities were fixed faster in Firefox than in other browsers during that period. During this period, Firefox used a monolithic architecture , like most browsers at the time. This meant all browser components ran in a single process with access to all system resources . This setup had multiple security issues. If

4446-452: The release of Firefox 85. On June 1, 2021, Firefox's 'Proton' redesign was offered through its stable release channel after being made available in the beta builds. While users were initially allowed to revert to the old design through about:config , the corresponding key-value pairs reportedly stopped working in later builds, resulting in criticism. These included accessibility concerns despite Mozilla's claim to "continue to work with

4524-479: The rendering component in its own sandbox. Firefox released this rewrite in to beta in August 2016, noting a 10–20% increase in memory usage, which was lower than Chrome's at the time. However, the rewrite caused issues with their legacy extension API, which was not designed to work cross-process and required shim code to function correctly. After over a year in beta, the rewrite was enabled by default all users of Firefox in November 2017. In 2012, Mozilla launched

4602-406: The same capabilities and image quality as PNG. Mozilla had implemented most of CSS Level 2 and some of the not-yet-completed CSS Level 3 standard. It was among the first browsers to pass the original Box Acid Test , although it doesn't fully pass the more rigorous Acid2 test for HTML, CSS, and PNG standards support. Other browsers based on newer versions of Mozilla's core technology, however, pass

4680-542: The security of existing components. Additionally, the older incompatible extension API was removed in favour of a WebExtension API that more closely resembled Google Chrome's extension system. This broke compatibility with older extensions but resulted in lesser vulnerabilities and a much more maintainable extension system. While the Servo project was intended to replace more parts of the Gecko Engine, this plan never came to fruition. In 2020, Mozilla laid off all developers on

4758-478: The security team until after Mozilla has shipped a fix for the problem. This is intended to deter the exploitation of publicly known vulnerabilities and give the developers time to issue a patch. While similar to other " responsible disclosure " policies issued by companies such as Microsoft, this policy is opposed to the full disclosure principle favored by some security researchers. As of June 2005, Secunia had reported three unpatched vulnerabilities in Mozilla with

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4836-581: The service to be signed. On May 2, 2019, Mozilla announced that it would be strengthening the signature enforcement with methods that included the retroactive disabling of old extensions now deemed to be insecure. Since version 60 Firefox includes the option to use DNS over HTTPS (DoH), which causes DNS lookup requests to be sent encrypted over the HTTPS protocol. To use this feature the user must set certain preferences beginning with "network.trr" (Trusted Recursive Resolver) in about:config : if network.trr.mode

4914-409: The show Mr. Robot was silently added in an update to Firefox. Firefox can have themes added to it, which users can create or download from third parties to change the appearance of the browser. In 2013, Firefox for Android added a guest session mode, which wiped browsing data such as tabs, cookies, and history at the end of each guest session. Guest session data was kept even when restarting

4992-447: The standard same-origin policy permission model that is followed by most modern browsers which disallows scripts from accessing any privileged data including data about other websites. It uses TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol. The freely available HTTPS Everywhere add-on enforces HTTPS, even if a regular HTTP URL

5070-436: The suite from the standalone products, the suite is marketed as "Mozilla Suite" or the more lengthy "Mozilla Application Suite". On March 10, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced that they would not release any further official versions of the suite beyond 1.7.x. However, the Mozilla Foundation emphasized that they would provide infrastructure for community members who wished to continue development. In effect, this means that

5148-441: The suite will still continue to be developed, but not by the Mozilla Foundation itself. To avoid confusing organizations that still want to use the Mozilla Suite, it was announced that the new, community-developed product would be named " SeaMonkey ", with version numbers that start at "1.0". Mozilla supported tabbed browsing , which allows users to open multiple Web pages in the same browser window. Originally only available through

5226-434: The terms of the Mozilla project's tri-license , as free and open-source software . In March 1998, Netscape released most of the code base for its popular Netscape Communicator suite under an open source license. The name of the application developed from this would be Mozilla, coordinated by the newly created Mozilla Organization, at the mozilla.org Web site. Although large parts of the original Communicator code, including

5304-410: The time including HTML , XML , XHTML , CSS , JavaScript , DOM , MathML , DTD , XSLT and XPath . Mozilla also supported PNG images and variable transparency, (which Internet Explorer only supported fully in version 7 ). Indeed, Internet Explorer's lack of support for PNG images has occasioned much debate, as many Web developers wanted to move away from the old GIF format, which does not have

5382-418: The use of the sandbox security model , same origin policy and external protocol whitelisting. One key characteristic of Mozilla security was that its source code is visible to everyone. Proposed software changes were reviewed by at least one other person, and typically "super-reviewed" by yet another, and once placed in the software were visible for anyone else to consider, protest, or improve. In addition,

5460-427: The websites users visit. Also known as state partitioning or "total cookie protection", SmartBlock works via a feature in the browser that isolates data from each site visited by the user to ensure that cross-site scripting is very difficult if not impossible. The feature also isolates local storage, service workers and other common ways for sites to store data. Firefox is a widely localized web browser. Mozilla uses

5538-409: The world could report a bug. Also, access to the source code of Mozilla Firefox, internal design documentation, forum discussions, and other materials that could be helpful in finding bugs were available to anyone. The Mozilla Foundation has issued a security bugs policy to help contributors to deal with security vulnerabilities. The policy restricts access to a security-related bug report to members of

5616-503: Was created by Netscape in 1998, before its acquisition by AOL . Firefox was created in 2002 under the codename "Phoenix" by members of the Mozilla community who desired a standalone browser rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, it proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft 's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6 . It

5694-485: Was made due to the fact the JavaScript was being used across a majority of websites on the web and disabling JavaScript could potentially have untoward repercussions on inexperienced users who are unaware of its impact. Firefox also cited the fact that extensions like NoScript , that can disable JavaScript in a more controlled fashion, were widely available. The following release added the ability to disable JavaScript through

5772-530: Was not available in non-Mozilla browsers, and the JavaScript Console was more advanced than the consoles available in non-Mozilla browsers. Venkman was a difficult to use but decent JavaScript debugger. These were installed by default, though you could opt them out (except for the JavaScript Console) with the other install options. Mozilla was designed with security in mind. Among its key features were

5850-534: Was passed to the Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization composed primarily of developers and staff from mozilla.org and owns the Mozilla trademark (but not the copyright to the source code, which is retained by the individual and corporate contributors, but licensed under the terms of the GPL and MPL ). It received initial donations from AOL, IBM , Sun Microsystems , Red Hat , and Mitch Kapor . However, all official ties with AOL were severed following

5928-459: Was positioned as a security-focused browser. At the time, Internet Explorer , the dominant browser, was facing a security crisis. Multiple vulnerabilities had been found, and malware like Download.Ject could be installed simply by visiting a compromised website. The situation was so bad that the US Government issued a warning against using Internet Explorer. Firefox, being less integrated with

6006-455: Was released on November 9, 2004, and challenged Internet Explorer 's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months. In November 2017, Firefox began incorporating new technology under the code name " Quantum " to promote parallelism and a more intuitive user interface . Firefox usage share grew to a peak of 32.21% in November 2009, with Firefox 3.5 overtaking Internet Explorer 7 , although not all versions of Internet Explorer as

6084-453: Was updated to include the ability to block scripts that used a computer's CPU to mine cryptocurrency without a user's permission, in Firefox version 67.0. The update also allowed users to block known fingerprinting scripts that track their activity across the web, however it does not resist fingerprinting on its own. In March 2021, Firefox launched SmartBlock in version 87 to offer protection against cross-site tracking , without breaking

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