History of Mozilla Firefox-Evolution with Screenshots

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser and Second largest most widely used browser with Usage share of 30%. Firefox dominates in Germany in Usage with 60% Market Share. Firefox runs on various operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and many other platforms.

Tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing are the latest features of Firefox. Firefox going release their most anticipated Firefox 4 shortly.

History of Mozilla Firefox – All Versions with Screenshots

Phoenix0.1 ( Earlier version of Firefox)

The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project.In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. After further pressure from the database server’s development community, on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox,often referred to as simply Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0

Mozilla prefers that Firefox be abbreviated as Fx or fx. Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. After a series of stability and security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update, Firefox version 1.5, on November 29, 2005. Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.12 is the final version officially supported under Windows 95.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0

On October 24, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox 2. This version includes updates to the tabbed browsing environment; the extensions manager; the GUI (Graphical User Interface); and the find, search and software update engines; a new session restore feature; inline spell checking; and an anti-phishing feature which was implemented by Google as an extension. Firefox supported under Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, and Windows ME.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0

Mozilla Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008,by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Mozilla Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web APIs. Other new features include a redesigned download manager, a new “Places” system for storing bookmarks and history, and separate themes for different operating systems. Firefox 3 had more than 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, setting a Guinness World Record.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5 also features an updated logo. Mozilla Firefox 3.5  released in June 2009, adding a variety of new features to Firefox. Version 3.5 was touted as being twice as fast as 3.0 (due its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine and rendering improvements).Initially numbered Firefox 3.1, Mozilla developers decided to change the numbering of the release to 3.5, in order to reflect a significantly greater scope of changes than originally planned.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6

Version 3.6 (latest version 3.6.15) is the release codenamed Namoroka.Development for this version started on December 1, 2008,and it was released on January 21, 2010.This release uses the new Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine. New features for Firefox 3.6 include built-in support for Personas (toolbar skins), notification of out-of-date plugins,full screen playback of Theora video, support for the WOFF open webfont format,a more secure plugin system, and many performance improvements.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0

Firefox 4, codenamed “Tumucumaque”, is currently in release candidate stage. Firefox will be released after all hard blockers are removed.It will bring a new user interface and is said to be faster.