Last modified on October 26, 2023, at 18:16

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox v43.0.4 running on Windows 7.
Mozilla Firefox v2.0 running on Windows Vista.
Firefox redirects here. For the novel and film of this title, see Firefox (novel and film). For other uses, see Firefox (disambiguation).

Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0. As the second most popular web browser in the world, it is the main competitor of Google Chrome.[1]

Advantages

Mozilla Firefox is a fast, stable browser with plenty of options. It is continually being updated, patched and improved. It can also be customized with a variety of addons from Mozilla's library. Third party plugins may also be added to the browser. Firefox has also been showing an interest in security lately. They have been making security-motivated changes, some of which are not found in Chromium and other competitors.
With the development of the new "quantum" engine, this browser has apparently improved its performance significantly.[2]

Disadvantages

When compared to Chromium, this browser has historically lagged behind in performance. However, a fully-rebuilt browser engine was release to the public in 2017, which drastically improved performance.[3] Although addons are plentiful and easy to create, they must be frequently updated by the developer, or the browser will disable them. Additionally, Mozilla has taken a very liberal political stance, which some find hard to agree with. For these reasons, some opt for forks of Firefox.

History

Firefox was originally developed as an offshoot of the Mozilla Browser project, developed by Netscape, as a lightweight version of the software. The original Mozilla browser was extremely feature rich, including such things as an HTML editor, which created a large and correspondingly slow piece of software. Firefox has gone through several name changes, all due to existing trademarks. It was originally named Phoenix, then Firebird and finally Firefox.

For many years, Firefox used Mozilla's "Gecko" engine. However, Mozilla's Project Quantum developed a new browser engine, which was released in fall 2017. A developer edition of the browser with this new engine was released in September 2017[4] with a general release taking place two months later. This new engine is at least twice as fast as the old gecko engine, and uses less system memory that Chromium.[5][2] However, some forks of Firefox stayed with the old Gecko engine, at least initially.

Market penetration

Since its original release in 2002, Firefox had a continued increase in the market share of web browsers until 2009, then a small decline due to competition from Google Chrome. Exact numbers are difficult to determine, but as of November 2012 worldwide, Firefox had a 24% share,[6] and as of November 2012, 28.5% in Europe.[7] By spring 2016, however, the browser's market share had dropped off to just over 15%.[8] Through heavy advertising and promotion, Google has continued to take market share from Mozilla and other competitors.

The browser is officially supported in over 70 languages,[9] and is available for the different versions of Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux, and Android operating systems. Unofficial builds are available for Sun Microsystems Solaris, BSD, and other operating systems.

Political Stance and boycotts of the Mozilla browser

The Mozilla Foundation openly supports the homosexual agenda. After CEO Brendan Eich, the creator of the programming language javascript,[10] was exposed as opposing same-sex "marriage" in California's Proposition 8 campaign, he was forced to resign.[11] He held the same exact view as Obama did, nevertheless, selective outrage is the liberal way.

In January 2020, Mozilla declared that "more must be done" to rid the Internet of President Donald Trump and who they claimed were other "bad actors", essentially announcing its support of First Amendment-violating illegal censorship and silencing of conservatives (including anyone who supports Trump) and speech they and the rest of the Left do not like.[12] Mozilla also falsely claimed, without proof, that the civil unrest throughout Trump's first term as President, which culminated in the Antifa-orchestrated attack on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, was the result of a "four-year disinformation campaign orchestrated by the President" (while ignoring that the Democrat Party, the liberal media, Big Tech, leftist terrorist/hate groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter and funders of the leftist insurrection against America and the Trump administration had all colluded to wage war against the country and its citizens, values and institutions while the liberal media itself engaged in its own disinformation campaign to smear America and the Trump administration and gaslight its citizens with fake news, false claims and brazen lies). As a result of Mozilla's announcement, many Firefox users retaliated by declaring that they would no longer use Firefox or its services and would switch over to other web browsers.[13][14][15]

Boycotts of the Mozilla browser

Some conservatives/libertarians have been encouraging people to uninstall Firefox and instead use open-source web browsers based on Mozilla Firefox or use other browser alternatives.[16]

There are other browsers based on Firefox such as the Comodo IceDragon browser and the Waterfox browser (which is reportedly faster than the Firefox browser).[17][18] The Brave web browser is also reportedly faster than Firefox by about 27%[19] (although this report may be have become obsolete with Mozilla's 2017 release of Quantum).

See also

References

  1. https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx
  2. 2.0 2.1 https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/09/26/firefox-quantum-beta-developer-edition
  3. https://www.howtogeek.com/332449/whats-new-in-firefox-quantum/
  4. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/09/firefox-quantum-developer-edition-fastest-firefox-ever/
  5. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/
  6. Browser market share
  7. AT Internet Institute - Article
  8. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-microsoft-internet-explorer-edge-browsers-first-time-statcounter/
  9. Firefox International Versions
  10. http://www.quirksmode.org/js/intro.html
  11. Ashburn, Lauren. "Mozilla CEO out for Opposing Gay Marriage." Fox News. FOX News Network, 3 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Jan. 2015. <https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/03/mozilla-ceo-out-for-opposing-gay-marriage>.
  12. THEY WANT BLOOD: Mozilla Argues “More Must Be Done” to Rid Internet of President Trump and other “Bad Actors” at the Gateway Pundit
  13. https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/mozilla-says-deplatforming-trump-isnt-enough-trump-banned-from-emailing-his-supporters-facebook-and-instagram-are-blocking-president-trump-from-using-their-services-indefini/
  14. https://www.newswars.com/mozilla-says-deplatforming-trump-not-enough-wants-to-shield-internet-from-bad-actors-as-users-uninstall-firefox-in-disgust/
  15. https://www.coreysdigs.com/big-tech/the-purge-just-got-real/
  16. Uninstall Firefox
  17. Version 34.0 of faster 64-bit version of Firefox released
  18. Waterfox browser website
  19. [1]

External links