Do you, like me, remember when Firefox 1.0 was released?
Our little browser has come a long way since then with RC1 of Firefox 3.0 having just been released.
Firefox today commands about 20% of the web browser usage share so it is no longer exclusively the browser-of-choice of the nerd, but of many ‘normal’ people too. Most websites will now support Firefox when a couple of years ago if you complained over the lack of Firefox support, you would get sniggered at!
So how has Firefox changed since 1.0 which was released nearly 4 years ago on 9 November, 2004?
Firefox 1.5 (29 November, 2005) lacked canvas and SVG support, the latter is now something all proper browsers have. These features are fairly minor additions compared to what was added in 2.0 (24 October, 2006): web feed previewing, search auto-suggest, anti-phishing protection, an improved addon manager and a search plugin manager. Firefox 3 will see an improved history and bookmark manager and much better OS X integration.
The beauty of Firefox, unlike IE, is that they don’t add dozens of pointless features to each new version but instead just make their product seem more polished and finished. I always find that Firefox seems ‘fresh’ due to the relatively frequent, minor twitches which are made to it.
Long live the Fox!
Actually, Firefox 1.0 lacked SVG support – Firefox 1.5 was the first release to include support.
Was it actually called Firefox at the 1.0 release? I remember it being named both Phoenix and Firebird at points, but can’t for the life of me remember if those were both pre-1.0 or not.
…Wikipedia has no informed me that those were both pre-1.0 names.
Also, I have to say that the best thing about Firefox is that it’s rendering engine is standards compliant. Thankfully, with FF3 it can also claim to be fast and resource-friendly.
I remember a time when it WASN’T called Firefox and it was an offshoot of Netscape called Firebird. I remember using it back then but it was clunky and slow so I stuck with Internet Explorer.
Not until they changed their name to Firefox and version 1.5 came out that I started using it with gusto and ditched IE altogether.