The History of Mozilla Firefox

Gsurface writes "Flexbeta has an article based on the history of Mozilla Firefox. The article goes build-by-build of every Firefox release since the early Phoenix days noting some of the most significant changes in every release."

Comments

changelog

[brontus3927]

Isn't that normally called a changelog?

Re:changelog

[Vamphyri]

Obligatory link to said historic changelogs list here

Re:changelog

[DoubleWhopper]

Seriously. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Short Attention Sp... Oooh, look! Shiny!

JWZ.

[Anonymous Coward]

The true history Jamie Zawinski.

Wow, the entire history!!!

[sgant]

From all the way back to...er...two and a half years ago?

Wow. Good thing we have that written down somewhere, are there even people still alive that remember that far back?

Re:Wow, the entire history!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I remeber the good ol days when we used to call our stripped down versions of mozilla things like Phoenix and FireBird. But thats way before your time sonney.

Re:Wow, the entire history!!!

[Zapper]

stripped down *cough*, yeah right.
great big bloated mess of slow-loading, cpu hogging non-internet explorer goodness. :-)

Re:Wow, the entire history!!!

[Saeger]

Very funny, except how much history is packed into those 2.5 years? Quite a bit. It's the whole exponential nature of progress thing. Every year that we build on past advances we compress more progress into less time (until... Singularity in ~2030).

Oh, and FireFox NeuralInterface Edition 12.0.1 is much faster than IE 7.501 SP4

whoops

[ack154]

There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working.

An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.

That administrator is going to get a LOT of emails. Oh, and I believe that "problem" it's talking about is called Slashdot.

We're looking at the wrong browser...

[wcitech]

I'd be more interested in looking at a brief history of Internet Explorer, for the same reasons that they teach kids history in school. (to prevent it from repeating).

Re:We're looking at the wrong browser...

[El Cubano]

I'd be more interested in looking at a brief history of Internet Explorer, for the same reasons that they teach kids history in school. (to prevent it from repeating).

I know you are trying to be funny, but only a fool feels that his own history is not worth examining. (Hint: Mozilla has made mistakes in its own past that we should try and avoid repeating in the future.)

Grrrrr.

[flynns]

Slashdotted at two comments. I blame it all on those pesky "subscribers". Slashdotting the page before us commoners can do it.

What, are we not GOOD enough to slashdot FlexBeta?? HMMM?

Re:Where can we get the history of slahdot?

[dotslasher_sri]

offtopic.. but wikipeida does provide a very good history about slashdot. make sure you read the slashdot subculture too. hilarious!

big deal

[us7892]

Meandering my around the ads, on this ad filled site, I finally chose the "printable version", so I could read the article in peace. I actually remember most of what is in this piece. Not much to see here...

The history of IE

[michelcultivo]

Day 1: New feature implemented Day 2: 10 bugs discovered today Day 3: Thats 10 bugs give me into another 2 bugs Day 4: New feature that work only with IE (haha netscape guys!!) Day 5: That feature give me another bug (Arrrhh!) Day 6: Where we are going today with this *#*$@!?

Re:Where can we get the history of slahdot?

[Teja]

Here you can learn a bit of the history of slashdot. Also, you can browse through some of the older slashdot posts http://slashdot.org">Here

/. Your E-mail

[BinaryLobster]

Niffty way to enhance the /. effect to include your e-mail server too.

------

If we were all rocket scientists, there would be more uses for rockets.

Re:You know your old skool...

[Timesprout]

You know your old skool if your school education did not include spelling or grammar.

let's hope

[Sv-Manowar]

Let's hope for the day they can add "Firefox usage overtakes IE usage" to that page. Although it may not be perfect, Firefox (pheonix, firebird etc) has been revolutionary - and I believe it has generally increase people's awareness about the web.

Well done to all the developers involved in the developement. Keep up the good work.

why?

[kin_korn_karn]

what's the point of things like this? Is this really news?

I'm not a paying subscriber and I'm not one to bitch about the stories but "Someone posted the FireFox changelog" is not news.

Mirrordot mirror

[Winckle]

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/8edf94739c87f105c f8051329b6b6dd7/index.html Mirror

Mirrordot cache

[amembleton]

Mirrordot cache

Just like Slashdot, coral cache doesn't seem to have a working copy.

Text, sans images...

[wx327]

- Flexbeta (http://www.flexbeta.net/index.php)
-- The History of Mozilla Firefox: From Phoenix, to Firebird, to Firefox (http://www.flexbeta.net/articles.php?action=showd &showarticle=89) Flexbeta Home
The History of Mozilla Firefox: From Phoenix, to Firebird, to Firefox
Posted by Gsurface on 30 Mar 2005 - 22:41
Introduction

Firefox is not just a browser; it is a religion, a way of life some might say, and for others, like me, a great damn way of reaching the web without all the ugly stuff that comes with it. Firefox has gone a long way, from name changes to added features, to conquering market share off of the world's most popular browser. Firefox has reached millions via not just web, but also through newspaper headlines all funded by Firefox users themselves. Many of the current Firefox users have been loyal users since the bird's initial flight, and though Firefox has been in the wild now for quiet some time, there are plenty of Firefox users that have recently discovered this marvelous browser. The Firefox browser was previously known as Firebird and before that, Phoenix. While the name has changed, the concepts remain the same. The history of Firefox begins with an idea to make an already existing web browser faster and leaner. Originally dubbed Phoenix, the browser within a few years turns into a revolution, an escape for many from the constant security vulnerabilities from Internet Explorer. The story starts with Phoenix 0.1, and builds up to what we know today as Mozilla Firefox.

Phoenix 0.1 - 0.3

Phoenix 0.1
Firefox begins not as Firefox, but as Phoenix, which was initially made public on September 23, 2002. The Phoenix browser, which uses a large amount of the Mozilla code, was designed to be a lean and fast browser that loads in about half the time of Mozilla. The initial release was codenamed "Pescadero", which means fisherman in Spanish, with a build of 0.1. Phoenix did not feature an installer, rather the user had to download the file and run the executable. Though the menus were customizable, there wasn't much to add to the toolbar. The only items that were available were the home icon, print icon, a go button and a button to go to the Mozilla home page. Though still a baby, Phoenix had a lot to offer such as a download manager which IE did not contain. Looking into the preferences, Phoenix 0.1 had little options for the user (compared to newer builds). This initial build did not contain a Google search engine on the toolbar, but it did contain a popup blocker and tabbed browsing. Certain shortcut features such as writing the URL then pressing Ctrl + Enter to automatically enter the .COM part of the URL was not available in 0.1. Phoenix 0.1 did not include a sidebar, which in the second release the Mozilla team would implement it.

Phoenix 0.2
The second release of Mozilla Phoenix, build 0.2, codenamed Santa Cruz, was released a few days after 0.1 on October 10th, 2002. Plenty of features were added to this new build including the sidebar, which allowed the user to view either their bookmarks, history, or recent downloads as a side window of the browser. Other enhancements were implemented including new options to the preferences section. Now users were able to disable Java and edit some tab browsing options. Phoenix 0.2 also introduced the ability to add extensions and themes to the browser.

The toolbar customization went through a huge overhaul. The user was able to add much more icons to their toolbar including a history icon, downloads, bookmarks, new window and a search bar. The search bar was for searching on the current page, dmoz.org, and Google, of course. Phoenix 0.2 was also marginally faster than 0.1, though it was very hard to notice the difference. Though some bugs were fixed in this build, the Mozilla team concentrated more on enhancing the browser and dedicat

Have a look

[Swamii]

Going way back to Slashdot circa 1998, posing the question, "Should Netscape GPL Mozilla?"? Link is http://web.archive.org/web/19980113191222/http://s lashdot.org/

Another Mozilla Article?

[bryan8m]

I've lost track of how many Mozilla posts there have been on Slashdot in the past few days. Glad to see it's really starting to catch on though!

Thanks /. !

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'll never get to find out which version of FF I should download. On the other hand, we will at least get to have The History of Flexbeta:

3:15 Article on FF history posted on Flexbeta
3:19 Slashdot posts article about Flexbeta's article
3:20 Smoke starts coming from Flexbeta
3:21 Sparks fly from Flexbeta
3:22 Feeding tube is removed from Flexbeta
3:23 Flexbeta is dead. R.I.P.

Slightly on topic

[acebone]

Just found this delicious article on howstuff works:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/firefox.htm/prin table

BTW - I keep forgetting the name of the service that provides automatic mirroring of websites. It is some stateside university that is behind it. Wouldn't it be a GREAT idea if either story submitters or Slashdot story posters browsed through the links in a submission via that service and then posted the alternate URLs as well as the original ??? Or am I commiting sacrilege by proposing something that could almost kill the slashdot effect ?

ignorant piece

[NynexNinja]

Its pretty ignorant for someone to write a piece about the "history of mozilla firefox" without discussing Netscape, Mosaic, etc...

Re:Where can we get the history of slahdot?

[NanoGator]

"Where can we get the history of slahdot? That would be interesting!"

Feb 1st... Mozilla releases a small incremental version update, headline news.

Feb 7th... Mozilla releases a small incremental version update, headline news.

Feb 14th.. Mozilla releases a small incremental version update, headline news.

Feb 15th... Dupe of Mozilla making a small incremental update.

Feb 19th... Mozilla releases a small incremental version update, headline news.

Experience

[AShuvalov]

Experience is that nice thing, which let you recognise your old mistake when you do it again.

Slight, very offtopic, language correction.

[perseguidor]

"Pescadero" the codename for 0.1, doesn't mean 'fisherman' in spanish. That would be "Pescador".

"Pescadero" is the person that sells the fish.

tried ff and went back

[chunderfest]

No matter which part of the phase you joined the team of Firefox users; there is one thing I am sure of, once you go Firefox, you never go back.

I joined at 0.8 and left again at 1.0. The mozilla suite is just plain more stable, often faster, and doesn't have ff's longstanding habit of crashing when printing to a file if CUPS is installed. In addition, while the extensions architecture may be clunkier in the suite, it's also more robust (for me at least). ff 1.0 kept dropping my extensions.

It didn't start with Phoenix 0.1

[Draconix]

Technically, it started with Netscape, then moved on to Mozilla. At the end of 2001, some Mac OS X developers came along and decided to create a stand-alone browser for OS X based on Mozilla, without the extras like the HTML editor, IRC client, email client, etc. This browser was first released as Chimera in the beginning of 2002. Chimera steadily got more and more popular under OS X, and ended up being _the_ browser for OS X users until Apple finally released Safari. After the success of Chimera in its first few months, Phoenix was conceived as, effectively, an attempt to combine the simplicity of Chimera with the cross-platform capability and UI of the main Mozilla browser. In other words, Phoenix didn't just pop up out of the blue, it had an inspiration that (sadly) most people seem to have forgotten.

Yes, I am using what Chimera became (Camino), and yes, perhaps I am a bit of a fanboy of it. It's an extremely solid browser, and despite its popularity waning due to Safari, it's still being developed, and I'm happy with its progress.

Re:It didn't start with Phoenix 0.1

[ahg]

Technically, it started with Netscape

Technically, the original Netscape was a derivative of NCSA Mosaic

Conclusion: Firefox started off as Mosaic, written by grad students... like all good software :-)

Firefox isn't a fox! It's a red panda..

[dcbarker]

A half-decent article but he/she mentions Firefox as being a small red fox. It's not. It's a red panda. One glimpse at the Firefox FAQ reveals this..

Wikipedia has one too

[ta bu shi da yu]

See History and development of Mozilla Firefox. Might be useful to compare against this article.