Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser developed for Windows, OS X, and Linux, with a mobile version for Android, by Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards.As of July 2013, Firefox has between 16% and 21% of worldwide usage, making it the third most popular web browser, according to different sources.According to Mozilla, Firefox counts over 450 million users around the world.The browser has had particular success in Indonesia, Germany, and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 57%,45% and 44% of the market share, respectively.
History
The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed 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 stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark problems 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 prefers that Firefox be abbreviated as Fx or fx, though it is often abbreviated as FF.The Firefox project went through many versions before version 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004.
Features
Features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, smart bookmarks, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through extensions, created by third-party developers,of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.Additionally, Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as Firebug.
Standards
Firefox implements many web standards, including HTML4 (partial HTML5), XML, XHTML, MathML, SVG 1.1 (partial),CSS (with extensions), ECMAScript (JavaScript), DOM, XSLT, XPath, and APNG (Animated PNG) images with alpha transparency.Firefox also implements standards proposals created by the WHATWG such as client-side storage, and canvas element.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 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 a proprietary protocol from Google called "Safe Browsing", used to exchange data related with phishing and malware protection.
Security
Firefox uses a sandbox security model,and limits scripts from accessing data from other web sites based on the same origin policy.It uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol.It also provides support for web applications to use smartcards for authentication purposes.The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" (up to 3000 USD cash reward and a Mozilla T-shirt) to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox.Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.Because Firefox generally has fewer publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see Comparison of web browsers), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.The Washington Post reports that exploit code for known critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for known, critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla issued a patch to remedy the problem.A 2006 Symantec study showed that, although Firefox had surpassed other browsers in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September, these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in other browsers – Firefox's vulnerabilities were fixed on average one day after the exploit code was made available, as compared to nine days for Internet Explorer.Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, as counted by security researchers.In 2010 a study of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) based on data compiled from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) Firefox was listed as the 5th most vulnerable desktop software, Internet Explorer ranked 8th, and Google Chrome as 1st.InfoWorld has cited security experts saying that as Firefox becomes more popular, more vulnerabilities will be found,a claim that Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation, has denied: "There is this idea that market share alone will make you have more vulnerabilities. It is not relational at all."In October 2009, Microsoft's security engineers acknowledged that Firefox was vulnerable since February of that year due to a .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Windows Update that silently installed a buggy 'Windows Presentation Foundation' plug-in into Firefox.This vulnerability has since been patched by Microsoft.As of February 11, 2011, Firefox 3.6 had no known unpatched security vulnerabilities according to Secunia.Internet Explorer 8 had five unpatched security vulnerabilities, the worst being rated "Less Critical" by Secunia.Mozilla claims that all patched vulnerabilities of Mozilla products are publicly listed.On January 28, 2013, Mozilla was recognized as the most trusted internet company for privacy in 2012.This study was performed by Ponemon Institute and was a result of a survey from more than 100,000 consumers in the United States.In February 2013, plans were announced for Firefox 22 to disable third-party cookies by default. However, the introduction of the feature has since been delayed so Mozilla developers can "collect and analyze data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies." Mozilla has also collaborated with the University of Stanford's "Cookie Clearinghouse" project to develop a blacklist and whitelist of sites that will be used in the filter.
Peformance
In December 2005, Internet Week ran an article in which many readers reported high memory usage in Firefox 1.5.Mozilla developers said that the higher memory use of Firefox 1.5 was at least partially due to the new fast backwards-and-forwards (FastBack) feature.Other known causes of memory problems were malfunctioning extensions such as Google Toolbar and some older versions of Adblock,or plug-ins, such as older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader.When PC Magazine compared memory usage of Firefox 2, Opera 9, and Internet Explorer 7, they found that Firefox used approximately as much memory as the other two browsers.Softpedia noted that Firefox 1.5 took longer to start up than other browsers,which was confirmed by further speed tests.IE 6 launched more swiftly than Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP since many of its components were built into the OS and loaded during system startup. As a workaround for the issue, a preloader application was created that loaded components of Firefox on startup, similar to Internet Explorer.A Windows Vista feature called SuperFetch performs a similar task of preloading Firefox if it is used often enough.Tests performed by PC World and Zimbra in 2006 indicated that Firefox 2 used less memory than Internet Explorer 7.Firefox 3 used less memory than Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.50 Beta, Safari 3.1 Beta, and Firefox 2 in tests performed by Mozilla, CyberNet, and The Browser World.In mid-2009, Betanews benchmarked Firefox 3.5 and declared that it performed "nearly ten times better on XP than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7".In January 2010, Lifehacker compared the performance of Firefox 3.5, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4 (stable and Dev versions), Safari 4, and Opera (10.1 stable and 10.5 pre-alpha versions). Lifehacker timed how long browsers took to start and reach a page (both right after boot-up and after running at least once already), timed how long browsers took to load nine tabs at once, tested JavaScript speeds using Mozilla's Dromaeo online suite (which implements Apple's SunSpider and Google's V8 tests) and measured memory usage using Windows 7's process manager. They concluded that Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 were the fifth and sixth fastest browsers respectively on startup, 3.5 was third and 3.6 was sixth fastest to load nine tabs at once, 3.5 was sixth and 3.6 was fifth fastest on the JavaScript tests. They also concluded that Firefox 3.6 was the most efficient with memory usage followed by Firefox 3.5.In February 2012, Tom's Hardware performance tested Chrome 17, Firefox 10, Internet Explorer 9, Opera 11.61, and Safari 5.1.2 on Windows 7. Tom's Hardware summarized their tests into four categories: Performance, Efficiency, Reliability, and Conformance. In the performance category they tested HTML 5, Java, JavaScript, DOM, CSS 3, Flash, Silverlight, and WebGL – they also tested start up time and page load time. The performance tests showed that Firefox was either "acceptable" or "strong" in most categories, winning three categories (HTML5, HTML5 Hardware acceleration, and Java) only finishing "weak" in CSS performance. In the efficiency tests, Tom's Hardware tested memory usage and management. In this category, it determined that Firefox was only "acceptable" at performing light memory usage, while it was "strong" at performing heavy memory usage. In the reliability category, Firefox performed a "strong" amount of proper page loads. In the final category, conformance, it was determined that Firefox had "strong" conformance for JavaScript and HTML5. In conclusion, Tom's Hardware determined that Firefox was the best browser for Windows 7 OS, but that it only narrowly beat out Google Chrome.
0 comments:
Post a Comment