FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB

Take back the web:

FIREFOX

Firefox is one of the most successful

open source projects ever. With help
from its creator, Blake Ross, Linux
COVERRE Format reveals how it made the
FEATU breakthrough in five key areas.

50 LXF66 MAY 2005 www.linuxformat.co.uk

LXF66.firefox 50 16/3/05 12:29:57 pm

 FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB

O
n February 25, the Mozilla
Foundation announced that
its Firefox web browser had
been downloaded more
than 25 million times since
its official 1.0 release less
than 100 days before. We knew from
Internet Explorer, an advantage thats
shared by all the open-source
browsers. Transgressions of web
standards are quickly highlighted by
users and web developers and can be
checked out almost immediately
even non-programmers can contribute.
by Internet Explorer have now created
a stable environment. Theres no
reason for open-source browsers not
to comply. Its hard to implement
standards, period but that doesnt
mean its harder to do just because
youre innovating, believes Meyer.
FIREFOX TIPS
Throughout this feature youll
find our favourite Firefox features.
Theyre a reminder of why its so
popular and, we hope, will improve
your web browsing experience...

the 0.8 release that Firefox was good,
but something about this felt different:
it was edging closer to the mainstream,
and receiving more mainstream press
coverage, than any other open source
project had been able to do.
Today, close to 30 million users
have, to use Mozillas own slogan,
taken back the web: happily browsing
the internet faster, more safely and
with fewer interruptions than at any
time in the last five years. But why has
Firefox been so astoundingly popular?
How has it made the breakthrough?
The continual development process
of open source also means that fixes
get rolled out quickly, without the need
to wait for a major release. As CSS
guru Eric Meyer puts it, Even a
crawling man will get ahead of a
stationary man, and a running man will
get even further ahead.
Mozilla has embraced open source
development without stinting on
standards-compliance. Used to ensure
web pages are accessible to as many
users as possible, web standards were
at first often theoretical benchmarks
Opera, Firefox, Safari all of these
browsers have been innovating while
sticking as close as they can to
standards, and with far, far less
resources than Microsoft commands.
In fact, Meyer believes open-source
projects may even be ahead: When it
came out, [IE] was pretty darned good,
but the web marches on and IE
has been standing still.
Its quite telling that should
you browse the Bugzilla logs for
Firefox (Bugzilla is Mozillas
bug-tracking system), youll
find that many are logged as
invalid these are the original

WHY HAS FIREFOX BEEN bugs resulting from other

browsers (mostly IE) failing to
SO HUGELY POPULAR? implement strict standards
that are followed in the
HOW HAS IT MADE Mozilla family.

THE BREAKTHROUGH? 2 Its secure

We knew there must be something
about the Firefox story that other open
source developers and advocates
could learn from, and we found
plenty. Here are the five secrets of
Firefoxs success.
1 Its open source
This might elicit a loud Doh! from our
readers, but beyond the free-software
community Firefox has managed to
make its open-source status a selling
point, rather than a limitation. The fact
that the code is open gives it an
immediate advantage over Microsofts
that some browser developers found
hard to apply in practice.
In many ways, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) relied on browser
developers to create and innovate the
features that could become standards
if the resulting standard didnt quite
match the code already implemented,
developers were left to choose
between rewriting significant chunks of
code (breaking backwards compatibility
in the process) or being branded bad
guys by the code cognoscenti. But
standards have matured, though, and
the years of browser space domination
Firefox is built on the
success of the Mozilla
web suite, inheriting
much of the advantages
of that softwares
rigorous approach to
standards and security.
Decisions such as
eschewing ActiveX on Windows, the
source of many problems on IE, has The Get Firefox campaign
given it a reputation for being safe included a two-page advert in the
New York Times, paid for entirely
from malware, phishing attacks and so
by user donations.
on especially in comparison with the
other browser.
Perceived security is a major >>
reason for its success. Starting out

HOW FIREFOX CAME TO BE

Key developments in the browsers history (1980April 1994)

1980 1992 March 1993 April 1994

Tim Berners-Lee, The future co-founder Andreessen announces Andreessen bumps
while working as of Netscape, Marc Mosaic, a networked into SGIs displaced
a contractor to Andreessen (right), information systems founder Jim Clark
CERN, proposes works with Eric Bina browser, and at the (right). Together they
a project designed to port an HTML same time releases start up the Mosaic
to facilitate the sharing of information browser from beta version 0.10 of Communications
among researchers. His idea is based expensive UNIX Mosaic for X/Motif Corporation, the first
on hypertext, allowing documents to workstations to a including full source company to capitalise on
be dynamically cross-referenced. more user-friendly PC. code and binaries. the growing world wide web.

www.linuxformat.co.uk LXF66 MAY 2005 51

LXF66.firefox 51 16/3/05 12:30:31 pm

 FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB
FIREFOX TIP:
SHORTCUTS
Firefox has shortcuts scattered
everywhere to make it fast and easy to
use, so why not take advantage of
them? For example, press Ctrl+Enter
to have Firefox add www and .com
to your URLs; Shift+Enter to have it
use .net, and Ctrl+Shift+Enter to have
it do .org. If you dont have the
location bar selected, hit Ctrl+L first,
or use Ctrl+K to select the Web Search.
THIS IS OPEN SOURCES
BEST CHANCE TO FREE
THE WORLD FROM IE.
FIREFOX TIP:
FORENSICS
Whether youre debugging your own
web pages or just curious about other
peoples work, the DOM Inspector lets
you pick apart the construction of a
website and see what Firefox is doing
to the code. To run the inspector, visit
the web page and then click Tools >
DOM Inspector from the menu bar.
HOW FIREFOX CAME TO BE
(continued: July 1994June1997)
July 1994
Unix Mosaic developer
Jamie Zawinski, during a
brainstorming session to find a
new name, blurts out a
suggestion of Mozilla!
supposedly a (very) loose
amalgam of Mosaic and NCSA.
52 LXF66 MAY 2005
LXF66.firefox 52
>>with security high on the agenda is
a bonus: the alternative of retro-fitting
security features to existing software is
hard and rarely as comprehensive as
integrating a system at the start.
Yes, it has vulnerabilities Mozilla
has already issued a security update
including a fix of a phishing users for eschewing commercial
vulnerability but theres a lot of
evidence to suggest that open-source
applications are at least as secure as
proprietary counterparts.
The security problems and
apparent stagnation of IE gave the
digerati an itch to look elsewhere.
Firefox, with its open-source nature
and power-user abilities, was a perfect
place to turn, says Meyer.
The long-heard and quite
reasonable assumption is that Internet
Explorer is more of a target because of
its larger install base. Presumably then,
as Firefox becomes more popular, there
will be plenty of people looking at ways
to subvert it.
Not necessarily, according to its
author, Blake Ross. Sure, it will
become a target. But that doesnt
mean hackers will be successful, he
says. Firefoxs code has been freely
available on the web for years, and the
Mozilla Foundation encourages top
people in the security industry to try to
find vulnerabilities. In fact, the
foundation actually pays security
experts to search for security bugs and
report them in a responsible manner,
October 1994
Mosaic Communications Corp releases a
web browser called Mosaic Netscape 0.9,
an Internet
Navigator optimised
for 14.4 modems,
including X,
Microsoft Windows
and Mac versions.
www.linuxformat.co.uk
and I think everyone on the team has
been very pleased with the dearth of
bugs uncovered thus far.
3 Its non-commercial
No adware extensions, no pop-ups
Firefox has gained support among
downright criminal, but even the
applications that are vulnerable to
exploitation. Its timing is perfect, as the
world becomes weary of in-your-face
selling and underhand data snooping.
In the beginning, of course, the
web was a happy place. In the Elysian
fields of interconnected ether, ideas
and information were exchanged freely
and without barriers. There werent so
many things you could do on the web,
to be sure, but it wasnt a dangerous
place to be frightened of. Then
business moved in. Money-makers
paved over paradise and put up an e-
commerce store.
The effects of the new e-conomy
appear in both the profit and loss
columns. On the plus side: far more
features, services and a more
connected internet lifestyle. It is easily
imaginable that you could run your life
on the internet bank your money,
and spend it on food, clothes, holidays,
pensions and Buffy DVDs without ever
leaving your chair.
In the other column, the
monetisation of the internet has led to
spam, pop-ups and, indirectly, to
phishing scams and many Nigerians
finding it difficult to inform people of
legitimate investment opportunities. In
a darker, less visible way, it has
also altered the objectives of
proprietary software
developers. Many commercial
companies have been guilty of
including features or selecting
November 1994
After a protracted lawsuit
with Andreessens previous
institution, the University
of Illinois, Mosaic
Communications changes its
name to Netscape, and its
browser is renamed
Netscape Navigator.
default options that benefit the
company more than the end user.
Marketing data is very valuable, so
valuable that in many cases its
profitable to develop and distribute
software for the sole purpose of
harvesting it. Such spyware can be
more innocuous examples give pause
for thought.
Back in 2000, Netscape caused a
stir when users noticed that the
SmartDownload file-downloading utility
issued each install with a unique ID
and communicated back to Netscape
details of every file that the user
downloaded. There was no alert dialog
to tell the user it was sending secret
information on their surfing habits
back to base the software just called
home whenever it liked.
Of course, the user had accepted
such an arrangement in the small print
of the licensing agreement when
installing it. And everybody reads that,
dont they?
Whether or not you mind your data
being harvested, such situations foster
distrust between the user and software
providers. There is a sense of caveat
emptor when installing new software
ironically this is especially true if its
April 1995
Netscape1.1 is
released. A
milestone in web
browsing, it
offers support for tables
and many other new attributes.
This, and the later 1.2 release
pushes Netscapes browser
market share to more than 80%.
16/3/05 12:30:46 pm
 FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB

FIREFOX INTO THE FUTURE FIREFOX TIP:

Developers are already working towards
the next major release: Firefox 2.0. But
its not a one-step hop from 1.0 to 2.0.
Instead, theyve split the transition into
three bite-sized chunks: 1.1, codenamed
Deer Park; 1.5 codenamed The Ocho (see
the film Dodgeball to get this obscure
reference); and 2.0.
Thanks to the long test cycle of Firefox
preview releases, the Gecko build inside
Firefox1.0 is out of date. But thats
changing 1.1 will resync with the
Mozilla tree, bringing in the rendering
fixes and tweaks made since Firefox1.0
was stabilised. For web developers, this
includes big changes like the inclusion of
CSS 3 columns and cursors, but most of
us will probably notice that the infamous
Slashdot rendering bug is fixed hurrah!
One minor change expected in 1.1 is
more support for the Gnome human
interface guidelines, resulting in
smoother integration between browser
and desktop. In 1.0, changing your
Gnome theme while Firefox is running
will update everything but Firefox this
is fixed in 1.1.
proprietary software that you havent
actually bought.
Then theres pop-up advertising: a
curse on most web users who dont
want their bandwidth compromised or
their screen cluttered with 1,001 offers
every time they hook up to the web.
For reasons still not clarified, when
Netscape released a browser based on
the Mozilla code that included the
ability to stop JavaScript from opening
new windows, it neglected to include
that option.
In the ensuing backlash, Netscape
released an update that did block
pop-ups, but there was a buried
whitelist in the preferences that by
A key target for developers in future
is adding per-site customisation
options, which should allow us to save
user agent settings, cookie options
and security levels that depend on
which URL is open.
Resist... you must resist
Following on from previous Firefox
releases, one thing were sure isnt
going to change is Firefoxs
resistance of extensions. Where
other browsers sling features into
the main code, Firefox has
consistently remained thin and
light, with any feature additions coming
in the form of extensions. If anything,
this process is going to be tightened as
extensions are given more control over
the browser without increasing the initial
browser download size.
Although no official dates are
available, we expect Firefox1.1 to be
available by the time you read this, with
1.5 approaching its first developer
preview (alpha) release. The race is now
on to ensure that the thrust behind
Users may berate the laxness of
Internet Explorer when it comes to
ActiveX, but at least Microsoft seems to
be trying to put the users needs first.
It is possible for proprietary developers
to make the right decisions. Blake Ross
agrees: Google is involved in
important stuff like writing a search
engine, and has emphatically spoken
out against pop-up ads on its website,
he points out. Google and other
thriving companies have figured out
that earning users trust will eventually
lead to far greater revenues than
anything a pop-up could rake in.
4 Its focused
Firefox continues the Spread Firefox
team and the advert that they placed in
the New York Times in December have
given the browser a good public profile,
and it must not be allowed to slip. This is
the open source softwares best chance
to liberate the world from the insecurity
of Internet Explorer, which means its
imperative that Firefox1.1 comes out
quickly to keep up the pace and raise
the pressure.
your own itch scenario. A user wants a
particular application, but finds that
none is available or that none works in
quite the way required. So the user,
with some programming ability, creates
an application themselves and releases
it into the wild. If it fulfils a more
general need others will begin using it
and perhaps contributing to it.
Over time, these projects attract a
great deal of momentum and
contributors. Usually this will lead to
more features being added and
more complex software applications,
which can hopefully serve more
general needs. Often though, it can
lead to a whole load of features that
RENDERING
Firefox pauses for a quarter of a
second before drawing web content,
but you can override that and force it
draw content immediately. To do this,
enter about:config into the location
bar, and look for the nglayout.
initialpaint.delay setting. If its not
there, right-click and select New >
Integer, and give it that name. The
default value is 250 (milliseconds), but
you can set it to 0 to make Firefox feel
much snappier.
FIREFOX TIP:
HIDE YOUR
HISTORY
As you browse around the web,
Firefox keeps track of all the sites you
visit. This helps when you visit the
same sites repeatedly in the same
session, but also means others can
follow your footsteps later on. If you
dont want this to happen, look in the
.mozilla/firefox directory in your
home directory, and youll see a
directory named xxxxxxxx.default (eg
wqye4sug.default). Go in there, type
rm f history.dat, then restart
Firefox this deletes your history, then
has Firefox recreate a blank file. Close
it again without doing anything, then
type chmod 444 history.dat to make
it read-only. Now any URLs you visit

default allowed any pop-ups served Historically, open source software nobody really needs, but which >> with Firefox will be forgotten as soon
as you close your browser!
from AOL or Netscape. projects have started from the scratch developers think are cool.

September 1995 March 1996 August 1996 June 1997

Microsoft bundles Internet Explorer
1.0 with its Windows 95 Plus Pack.
While IE is still technically inferior to
Navigator, bundling free software
with commercial
packages draws the
line of battle for the
coming of the
Browser Wars.
Netscape Navigator 2 implements
several new and unique features
(including Java and JavaScript)
that pave the way for much of
the modern web experience.
This month also sees AOL bundle
(notice the use of this word applied to
a certain company again) Internet
Explorer with its own software.
Netscape releases Navigator 3.0. Netscape releases
New to this version are Communicator version 4.
multi-column text, This version supports
horizontal and vertical most of CSS 1.1, and
spacing, strikeout and and introduces Layers for the
table cell background first time. Communicator
colours. New plug-ins are not only includes the
supported, including browser, but also an email
Apples QuickTime. and news client.

www.linuxformat.co.uk LXF66 MAY 2005 53

LXF66.firefox 53 16/3/05 12:30:49 pm

 FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB

FIREFOX EXTENSIONS
Firefox is purposely plain. But if youre after more features, heres how to add them

Blake Ross wrote Firefox to avoid the

creep of new features that was
bogging down Mozilla. As a result,
using the browser can be a rather
spartan experience, but Ross and his
developers have made sure that you
can add functionality easily through
what they call extensions.
Extensions are installed and
managed through their own window
accessed within Firefox from the Tools
menu and the easiest way to install
them is by simply clicking on Get More
Extensions. When a new version of
Firefox is released all the installed
extensions can be updated in a single
stroke from the same window.
Firefoxs extensions page is at update.
mozilla.org, along with other recent
updates. Installation is usually as
simple as clicking on the link, with
Firefoxs extension manager
automatically handling the details.
After download, most require a
complete restart of the browser
(including the download manager). You
can acceess options pertinent to each
extension from the Tools menu, or
directly from the Extensions window.
Firefox can be customised to feel like a completely different browser.

FIREFOX TIP:
HTTP
PIPELINING
Send your network
performance through the roof by
enabling HTTP pipelining, a neat trick
that allows Firefox to request multiple
files simultaneously. about:config
comes to our rescue set
network.http.pipelining to true, and
you can also enable network.http.
proxy.pipelining while youre there.
Ad-free web browsing
Top of the list when it comes to
extension must-haves is Adblock. While
this may annoy advertisers and
jeopardise the continuing existence of
many free websites, theres no doubt
>> Mozilla itself is a notable example
of this (see Firefox Extensions box,
above). The original Netscape code
attempted to create a suite of
applications. As well as the browser,
there was an email client, which
doubled as a newsreader too. So far, so
reasonable. Then came Composer, a
web-layout tool. In some ways,
because of economies of sharing code,
it gives you more control. Once installed,
Adblock makes itself known via a small
box in the lower right of the main
window. Clicking on this presents you
with a list of items on the current page
that its possible to block. Adverts are
this made sense to the developers
but did it make sense to users? A far
lesser proportion of web users now
have any need for a visual HTML
composer, but because the idea was
there already, it was hard to imagine
leaving it out.
The initial Mozilla release
approached 30 million lines of code:
impressive, but a bit of a worry the
usually obvious, either by their file
extension (.swf for Flash for example) or
their domain. Adblock also places a small
tab into the rendered page that, when
clicked, allows you to remove the
offending advertisement directly.
kernel for Linux comes in at under
5 million lines. The size of the software
wouldnt be an issue if it werent for
the fact that much of it is for non-core
functionality. In a clear example of the
Pareto principle, 80% of users may
need only 20% of the features.
There is also a tendency in open
source for the existing code to be
extended and made better by

HOW FIREFOX CAME TO BE

(continued: October 1997August 2002)

October 1997 January 1998 March 1998 April 1998

Internet Explorer 4.0 is Facing annihilation at the
released. Despite IE hands of Microsofts
playing catch-up to bundled browser, Netscape
Navigator over the makes the decision to
previous 18 months, release Navigator for free.
this release marks the This includes the binary
start of its domination of code, as well as most of the
the marketplace. code-base under an
open-source licence.
An early development Netscape Communications announces a
snapshot of Netscape new browser rendering engine, initially
Communicator is released as named Raptor. In what will become
source code to the a theme for Mozilla, this
recently-founded Mozilla name is already taken
Organisation. Developers are it opts for the
encouraged to download the more lizardy (and
code (8MB) and post their geekier-sounding)
own enhancements. Gecko instead.

54 LXF66 MAY 2005 www.linuxformat.co.uk

LXF66.firefox 54 16/3/05 12:30:53 pm

 FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB

of them initially and they had a clear

Firefoxs extension manager.
Drawing shapes with the mouse to
control a browser (rather than clicking
buttons on the GUI) was considered too
esoteric for the main Firefox release, but
this power is easily installed using the
All-In-One Gestures extension. Basic
gestures include forward, backward and
reload, but there are also more advanced
gestures such as tab switching, scrolling
and font sizes. New gestures can be
added manually by drawing the
corresponding action on to a canvas, and
once you get used to them its difficult to
go back to buttons.
You know Gmail has reached critical
mass when theres more than a dozen
ways of managing your inbox. As Firefox is
probably the default browser for
accessing Gmail (especially for KDE users)
developers, which usually results in it
getting longer as team-based
contribution exercises are generally
additive rather than reductive. The
whole Mozilla team have recognised
this problem, and there are efforts
within the Mozilla developer
community to address it. The current
roadmap exhorts programmers:
Tinderbox now measures code footprint,
it makes a lot of sense to integrate
Gmail directly, and thats exactly
what the Gmail Notifier extension
does. This great little tool sits in
the status bar and simply informs
you of any outstanding Gmail
messages. Clicking on the little
red envelope opens a Gmail
session under a new tab, quickly
giving access to all that spam.
Download peekaboo
Other extensions worthy of a
mention include:
Download Status Bar, which
lets you see the status of downloading
files without having to resort to the
external window.
User Agent Switcher changes the
browser identifier sent to a site, often
providing access to stubborn locations
such as online banks that insist on a
certain browser.
Translate performs BabelFish magic.
MediaPlayerConnectivity allows you
to open embedded media content with
a configurable external program a
great way of avoiding those terribly
constrained RealPlayer windows.
Best of the bunch, though, is the
ScrapBook extension. This lets you drag
highlighted clips from a web page into
the side bar for later reference. The
clips includes text and images, along
with a link to the original source, and
can become irreplaceable.
so lets start working to reduce it rather to do more complicated things, to
than increase it. Resist the all-too-
common tendency to add more code.
Try to remove code, simplify over-
complicated code [and] undo
premature optimisations.
In retrospect, the decision of
Firefoxs developers to split off and
work on a minimised browser probably
succeeded because there were so few
idea of where they wanted to go. Blake FIREFOX TIP:
Ross admits: A major problem with DISABLE BLINK
the old Mozilla software was that
Although the <b> and <i> HTML tags
literally dozens of people influenced get our goat (use semantic tags,
the products direction. That just dammit), they are mere bagatelles
doesnt scale. compared with <blink> the evil
horror that makes text and other
5 It puts users first elements flash on the page.
Fortunately, Firefox users can disable
Who is software for? Its a question
this through about:config just look
that the Firefox developers have
for browser.blink_allowed and set it
constantly asked themselves. Theyd to false, and your eyeballs need never
say its for the user, but in proprietary be scalded again!
development, there are obvious
compromises to be made. For one, the
USABILITY IS MORE
IMPORTANT THAN
FUNCTIONALITY.
business itself needs to be maintained,
which is still the case even when
proprietary software is delivered for
free. There is an incentive to put the
business aims before those of the user.
Even in the arena of open source,
the end user is not the focal point of
all development. Ask the average
developer what makes them devote so
much time and energy to coding, and
creating usable applications with a
wide appeal isnt likely to be their top FIREFOX TIP:
reason. Its natural to want to do more
RESIZE FRAMES
satisfy the code equivalent of Page frames can be a boon to site
usability, but we froth at the mouse
machismo by doing hard things,
when inconsiderate programmers force
sometimes in an obscure but
them to a specific width we have big
essentially cunning way. For software monitors for a reason and dont want
thats going to be used by people of 120-pixel width restrictions, thank-
the same mindset, this isnt so much of you-so-very-much. Firefox comes to
a problem. the rescue. Look in about:config and
But to switch over into broad >> set layout.frames.force_resizability to
true and breath a sigh of relief.
mainstream use, usability is more

November 1998 November 2000 August 2002

AOL buys Netscape for After a three-year hiatus, Disillusioned by Mozillas
$4.2 billion. There are Netscape 6.0 is released. bloated and feature-rich
worries that this could signal Based on the Mozilla 0.6 direction, developers
the end of Netscapes quirky branch, its a total failure Blake Ross and David Hyatt
Gecko project, but AOL thanks to the terrible UI, take a partial fork of the
remains committed to awful page rendering and Mozilla code base. They
financing Mozilla.org despite stability that would make intend to build a lean
having no plans to switch Cristiano Ronaldo look like a browser with a laser-
from using IE. mountain goat. sharp focus on the user.

www.linuxformat.co.uk LXF66 MAY 2005 55

LXF66.firefox 55 16/3/05 12:30:57 pm

 FIREFOX TAKE BACK THE WEB

Two browsers showing the same

site. You cant tell the difference in
speed from a static picture, but you The key to Firefoxs success is simplicity. Firefox knows what users want and
can see the extra complexity of the
example on the left, the beta
version of Netscape Browser 8.0.
What are all the buttons for? We
used it for a few hours and still
cant tell you. Firefox, on the
right, is simple enough for your
granny to use.
FIREFOX TIP:
MAXIMISE
Once you make the switch to
tabbed browsing, having multiple
browser windows open becomes a bad
memory. But how can you make the
most of your screen real estate? With
Firefox, the answer is simple: tap F11 of pop-up ads and spyware and other
to switch to Full Screen mode. Firefox annoyances. They were spending more
will take up surprise, surprise the
whole screen, getting rid of the
window decoration at the top and also
any menu bars you have at the bottom.
>> important than functionality,
something emphasised by Blake Ross.
I cant stress that enough. Software
developers seem to be stuck in an
endless search for the next big feature. Search in the toolbar.
With Firefox, we zoom in on each and
every part of the product, reworking
and refining and tweaking it until its
just right for mom and dad. All these
little things add up to a superb overall
experience, and thats the big feature.
So Taking back the web isnt just a end user. Are its five secrets really
catchy slogan for Firefox, there are
some real issues at the heart of it, as success? Unfortunately, yes, says Ross.
Blake explains: Back when we
worked at Netscape, we read the
feedback that users submitted almost
obsessively, and a common thread
emerged: people complained that
theyd lost all control of their browsing
experience and were now at the whim
time fighting with the web than using it
to get stuff done.
This seemed backwards to us:
technology is supposed to empower
users, not control them. Its not
isolated in a development bubble:
puts them first. So its hello tabbed
browsing, live bookmarks and Google
Community call
Firefox is a well-conceived idea,
developed properly with an eye on
security, restraint when it comes to new
features and sole consideration for the
movements best chance of winning
enough to account for its revolutionary
I say unfortunately because there
shouldnt be anything revolutionary
FURTHER RESOURCES
For more information about Firefox,
check out the home page at
www.mozilla.org/products/firefox and
advocacy site www.spreadfirefox.com.
Blake Ross is a founder of the Firefox
team and an all-round nice guy. Catch
up with his life and thoughts at
www.blakeross.com.
about the Firefox model: ease of use
and simplicity should be the driving
principles of any software project, open
source or not. I think Firefox is making
waves because its the first
open-source product to really dive
headfirst into the consumer pool, and I
hope our success is a signal to the rest
of the community that they can come
on in, the waters fine.
So a consumer-friendly model can
work in open source. Perhaps its the
mainstream acceptance. The era of
by geeks for geeks software
development is over, says Ross. Open
source can play in the big leagues. LXF
Eric Meyer is a leading expert on CSS,
principal consultant at Complex Spiral
and the author of several excellent
books. Check out his homepage,
www.meyerweb.com.
Read exclusive full interviews with Blake
Ross and Eric Meyer on our relaunched
website, www.linuxformat.co.uk.

HOW FIREFOX CAME TO BE

(continued: September 2002November 2004)

September 2002 April 2003 February 2004 November 2004

First binary release of the
forked project, named
Phoenix, version 0.1.
According to the release notes,
the browsers features include
a customisable toolbar, a
quick search facility (for
bookmarks and history) and
speed, speed, speed.
Trademark issues force the team
to change the name of the
project to Firebird. This name is
used for the following months
0.6 release, which features
smooth scrolling and automatic
image resizing.
Following further problems
with a free database called
Firebird, the project makes
its final name change to
Firefox. This is followed
with the 0.8 milestone
release, now with
Windows installer and
download manager.
Official release of version
1.0 of the Firefox browser.
The volunteer advocacy
group Spread Firefox
takes out a two-page ad
in the New York Times to
publicise the launch.

56 LXF66 MAY 2005 www.linuxformat.co.uk

LXF66.firefox 56 16/3/05 12:31:00 pm