Ninth Anniversary of Firefox 1.0 Release

Nine years ago today, Firefox 1.0 was released. Mozilla writes "Mozilla created Firefox to be an amazingly fun, safe, and fast Web browser that embodies the values of our mission to promote openness, innovation and opportunity online. In the nine years since we first launched Firefox, we have moved and shaped the Web into the most valuable public resource of our time." The first release of the little project to write a lighter alternative to Seamonkey is a bit over a year older.

Comments

don't care.

[gl4ss]

phoenix was where it was at.

it all started going downhill after politics and marketing departments of mozilla got involved.

the 1.0 release was pretty much meaningless milestone in the big picture for the project. imho phoenix 0.2 should be the release to celebrate if any.

Re:don't care.

[maugle]

Phoenix 0.2 was amazing for its day, but what we should really be celebrating is how the web was freed from the curse of "this site works in IE only". And that happened after Phoenix became Firefox.

Re:don't care.

[Runaway1956]

Yep. The youngsters won't remember that, and some of the not-so-young have forgotten it. If Firefox disappeared tomorrow, and we never saw another release, it would have served it's primary purpose. We would still have four major browsers available, all largely "standards compliant", along with a number of less popular browsers. Firefox changed the landscape, dramatically.

I can't even remember which milestone I started on now, but it seemed to take FOREVER for 1.0 to come out. I guess it's close to a decade since I grabbed my first copy of Firefox now. To lazy to look up the dates for all the point.whatever releases.

Re:don't care.

[Nimey]

Truth. Back then websites were typically written for IE5 or 6 and sometimes Netscape 4. Writing web pages to standards was for activist nerds, because at that point IE's market share was around 90%.

Re:don't care.

[linebackn]

Yep. The youngsters won't remember that, and some of the not-so-young have forgotten it. If Firefox disappeared tomorrow, and we never saw another release, it would have served it's primary purpose.

This.
People may not realize it, but we came dangerously close to a world where Microsoft Internet Explorer was the only accepted web browser. If Mozilla and Firefox had not gained popularity, it is quite probable that IE would have dominated enough market share to push out all other browsers. And nobody would bother creating sites that worked in anything else. Furthermore this would have virtually killed any OSes that Microsoft didn't feel like supporting with IE.

As is is now, we have several open source browsers that are ported to many different OSes, and no dignified web site would even think of only supporting one browser.

Re:Chrome Is Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to say, but Firefox is kind of irrelevant these days.

Chrome is developed by a company whose sole purpose of existence is to spy on people in order to sell more advertising - a lot of it via their browser.

Mozilla is just out to make a browser, email client and other useful tools.

Also, any perceived superiority shall be removed in a release or so - the browser market is just too competitive.

wtf happened...

[Anonymous Coward]

to that 'lean' browser of yesteryear?

Re:wtf happened...

[rudy_wayne]

to that 'lean' browser of yesteryear?

Exactly.

The problem isn't just that Firefox is bloated and full of unnecessary crap. Even worse, they keep changing or removing existing features that are actually useful. Every new version now brings more pointless changes that make Firefox just a little bit worse. And no matter how much users complain about all the constant pointless tinkering and the nonstop treadmill of unnecessary changes, the response from Mozilla is always the same. A thinly veiled Fuck You We Don't Care What You Think.

Last good version. (1.5)

[Anonymous Coward]

FF1.5 was and still is the only good version.

After that it went downhill with them adding crap features, bloating the hell out of the browser and breaking the API EVERY SINGLE GOD DAMN TIME. THEY STILL DO THIS NOW. LEARN WHAT AN API IS YOU MORONS, APIS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BREAK, THAT IS THEIR POINT!
I gave up caring about their nonsense when Chromium became stable enough. (v0.3, still on my desktop for some reason)

I still have one installed, webdev, etc.
The only thing I mainly use it for is for a couple extensions that are not on Chromium, such as mass downloader or interception of data.
It is an absolute chore dealing with their crap all the time. No wonder every damn developer has left for other browsers. Thanks Mozilla, not only did you ruin your browser you went against your original aim, to create competition. You shot yourself in the foot so much that everyone abandoned you. Genius.

Re:Chrome Is Better

[Richard_at_work]

I would agree, but all of a sudden I'm having huge issues with Chrome :(

Tabs becoming unresponsive, mysterious downloads in the background stopping me from quitting, tabs taking ages to close etc etc.

No extensions, no java, no flash.

Re:Nine, eh?

[rudy_wayne]

Well, at least we can celebrate the first years. Before the new versioning system and adding everything but your mom's dong instead of letting addons do the work.

It's worse than that. With every new version, useful features are changed or removed and people are being forced to use more and more extensions to regain functionality that has been ripped out. Which leads to the current ridiculous situation:

-- You have to depend on some random person to create the extensions you need
-- You have to hope that the random person continues to update the extension so that it works with future versions of Firefox
-- Or you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to write extensions yourself just so you can restore functionality that never should have been removed in the first place
-- Installing too many extensions is well known to cause performance and/or stability problems with Firefox.

Re:Chrome Is Better

[NotBorg]

This is the part where Internet trolls mod each other up and start thinking they're relevant.

Lost its way

[schwit1]

They got off track when the goals stopped being about speed, standards, stability and security.

At that point it became just another app.

Re:Lost its way

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was true, they wouldn't have rewritten their Javascript engine twice, been obsessing about hardware acceleration, wouldn't have bothered to make it the browser using the least amount of RAM after being the one that used the most two years ago, etc. They haven't even finished implementing HTML5 yet because they're so focused on performance, including threading the browser and efforts to improve their DOM engine's performance that won't pay off for at least another year at this rate.

In the face of those facts, I don't think it's necessary to point out how silly your argument sounds. Firefox has a lot of issues, so you really don't have to go out of your way to lie like that.

Re:Lost its way

[Zenin]

The fact is they have to focus on performance, especially their Javascript engine...precisely because their performance sucks big harry balls, most especially their Javascript engine!

Call me back when/if they ever actually make progress. All I've seen as a user is a browser that has gotten nothing but slower and slower with each release, a sharp contrast to Chrome and IE.

Re: Chrome Is Better

[jemmyw]

No. I used Chrome for a few years there but I got unhappy that it was the only closed source application I was using on a daily basis. So I moved back to Firefox and have found it a good experience. The only gripe I have after 9 months is that the dev tools feel slugish.

I'm even using Firefox on Android and find that better than Chrome.

I wish they'd stop fucking with the layout

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every new iteration of FF removes or detrimentally alters a feature that people use and rely on.

It's really starting to piss me off as I have to find extensions or workarounds to replace the functions they keep taking away.

The most recent annoyance is to the find-in-page function, before it was well laid out and I had absolutely no issues with it, but now it's ruined, the close bar X button has been moved from immediately left of the search box to the right edge of the bar which is really far away on a widescreen display, the search next/prev boxes have been reversed and no longer have Next and Previous words on them which makes them a smaller target for your mouse pointer, and the Highlight All and Match Case buttons have also been moved to the right edge of the bar.

Seriously Mozilla, what the fuck?

Re:I wish they'd stop fucking with the layout

[jez9999]

Yep. Switch to SeaMonkey.

By the way, I'm working on a patch to make fork SeaMonkey's find bar code back to the old find bar so it's no longer reliant on the stuff in /toolkit/. Time will tell whether it gets accepted.

Re:Nine, eh?

[buchner.johannes]

Installing too many extensions is well known to cause performance and/or stability problems with Firefox.

Having too many extensions does not cause performance/stability problems. Individual, poorly written extensions do, when they leak memory.

Every time Firefox comes up as a topic on /., people say they want it simpler and smaller, and follow the newest trends young browser projects bring. It's ridiculous to expect it to not change the UI at the same time.

-- You have to hope that the random person continues to update the extension so that it works with future versions of Firefox

Firefox extensions don't need to be updated by the developer for future versions.

-- You have to depend on some random person to create the extensions you need

If that is true, then there are not enough people that have your problem, and are happy with the change Firefox devs introduced.

It's a self-correcting problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at these numerous different measures of browser usage shares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_share#Historical_usage_share

The most obvious trend concerning Firefox is the steady downward slide in its usage share. It has gone from over 30% of the market back in 2010 to down near 15% these days.

Firefox 4.0 was released in March of 2011, although it was obvious before then that bad decisions were being made, and would continue to be made. This is when people in the know moved on to other browsers, followed by stragglers.

The decline is very much due to how they've treated their users like absolute rubbish. They've focused on stupid UI changes, adding useless features and functionality that nobody wants, and removing very critical functionality that many users depend on, all while ignoring the pleas of the community to fix some very major issues like Firefox's slow performance and unbelievable memory usage.

People aren't dumb. They know when they're getting shit upon, and they'll deal with it. That's why they've mainly moved to Chrome. It may have a shitty UI, but at least it's fast, at least it doesn't use far too much memory, and at least Google manages to not piss off most users with each release.

When a product loses 50% of its usage share over just a few years, it'll most likely become a dead product within a few more. I hate to say it, but Firefox is on its way out. The numbers show it, and there's nothing being done to reverse this trend.

Re:It's a self-correcting problem.

[Ark42]

The decline is solely from Chrome becoming mainstream and Google advertising it on their site, where lots of mom and pop Firefox users probably "accidentally" switch to Chrome because of some warning or advertisement from Google.

The reality is both Chrome and Firefox are great browsers, and only a tiny fraction of people are upset with the changes from version to version. Generally, most of us should just be happy that people are NOT using IE6 anymore.

Although personally, Chrome has not kept up with important CSS3 features nearly as well as Firefox, and now IE10 and IE11 have passed Chrome in my book. I mean, something as BASIC as linear gradients you'd expect to work in all modern browsers, but only Firefox and IE10+ can get it right. See bug 41756 - http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41756#c71

Re:It's a self-correcting problem.

[Runaway1956]

I must point out that Chrome doesn't beat Firefox in memory usage. I just swapped from a Linux Mint Debian installation, in which I used Firefox primarily, to a Sabayon Linux installation, in which I use Chrome primarily. Similar configurations, similar extensions, similar page load - very similar memory usage. I suppose that anyone could do that same test for themselves, and different people would get different results. Someone who loads a butt-ton load of Java apps in their browser may find that brand Z works better, while someone who gloms onto every Flash app will find that brand Y works best, while the other dude who runs a stripped down version with no extensions enabled finds that brand X is bestest and fastest.

For MY purposes, it actually seems that Firefox may have a very slight edge on Chrome for memory usage, but I'd have to do some double checking before I committed myself to that statement.

Re:It's a self-correcting problem.

[Derek Pomery]

I'd say waaaaaay beyond a slight edge thanks to the memshrink project.
https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/

Old measurements. Situation keeps improving. Latest 2 or 3 firefox versions use smart loading/unloading of large images on image heavy web pages, for example.
http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/figure3_browserfootprint.jpg

Personally, on my chromebook, Chrome used 615MiB w/ 2 tabs open (crosh and a blank tab) while Firefox in Crouton used 385MiB with 18 tabs open, and that was after I had cycled through all the tabs to make sure they hadn't been unloaded.

Re:It's a self-correcting problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely the kind of whining that shows that we don't deserve a product like Firefox. A feature I don't want gets added in? Surely nobody wanted it! They removed a feature that I use? Surely it's because they're out to get me!

You people whine like there's no tomorrow. In the meantime Internet Explorer changes it's UI in every release and keeps adding features "nobody wants" but their share keeps climbing. In the meantime Chrome makes boneheaded mistakes and invents tons of stuff that only a few businesses care about, and they're the saviors of the Internet.

Really, Firefox fans need to chill the fuck out and (for lack of a better phrase) check their damn entitlement. You're not the only people in the world, and Firefox isn't dying because they're ignoring you. They're dying because nobody wants to use a browser that even the fans hate. They're dying because they can't compete against three companies with gobs of money. Even Opera couldn't compete, and they weren't a non-profit organization.

It's clear as clear can be that Mozilla cares about its users. It's replaced half their codebase to appease user's addictions to Javascript and fancy special effects that require hardware acceleration. It woke up to their addon RAM problems and in 2 years have become the lowest RAM user of the major browsers.

But do its fans care? No! Because they also removed a fucking checkbox from the UI, because it was causing other people problems. No! Because they couldn't keep moving Firefox forward without dropping some of their lesser-used UI elements and hoping the community will pick up the slack.

Understanding is a precious commodity, and Firefox's own vocal fans are shooting themselves in the foot by pretending that Mozilla has to cater to their whims and their whims only. They cry about Firefox losing marketshare, then cry more when Mozilla works to solve that problem, because suddenly the tiny crowd of people they were catering to (which couldn't sustain them) isn't the only game in town.

In short, you guys suck. I'm glad I'm not using Firefox anymore. I get to hear all sorts of praise for my browser of choice even when it screws up, because its fans understand that shit happens, and don't obsess over the problems. They realize that much more "good" has happened. You guys can't do that. You don't deserve Firefox anymore.

Re:It's a self-correcting problem.

[Billly Gates]

I must point out that Chrome doesn't beat Firefox in memory usage. I just swapped from a Linux Mint Debian installation, in which I used Firefox primarily, to a Sabayon Linux installation, in which I use Chrome primarily. Similar configurations, similar extensions, similar page load - very similar memory usage. I suppose that anyone could do that same test for themselves, and different people would get different results. Someone who loads a butt-ton load of Java apps in their browser may find that brand Z works better, while someone who gloms onto every Flash app will find that brand Y works best, while the other dude who runs a stripped down version with no extensions enabled finds that brand X is bestest and fastest.

For MY purposes, it actually seems that Firefox may have a very slight edge on Chrome for memory usage, but I'd have to do some double checking before I committed myself to that statement.

You know Firefox 24 is a big improvement over 4 but you know what? No one cares after what they did. Compare IE as an example?

IE is a great browser now! No really. IE 11 supports HTML 5, CSS 3, hardware acceleration and low latency javascript that rivals both Chrome and Firefox. I tested it as snappy.

But does anyone on slashdot care? NOPE!

They remember IE 6 and some of us geeks who have suffered through developing old IE pages and removed malware last decade from silverhaired users who do not know what a browser is who think that blue E standard for E-internet have made up our minds. IE SUX! I will not try it again yada yada.

Same is true with Norton AV, and even Windows 7 (XP diehards tried Vista and are scared of change now). Firefox is no different.

The mindshare is lost regardless of the fact that Firefox 24 is a much much better browser than the horrible 4.0. Once you lose that trust with some bad products it is hard to get back.

Re:It's a self-correcting problem.

[siride]

Chrome is becoming a bloated piece of shit too. It used to start up quickly and load pages quickly. That's going out the window in my experience. They are also starting to have bugs that never resolve, or take a long time to resolve. One that's been bothering me recently is that YouTube videos playing in other tabs skip when you do pretty much anything in another tab. It's 2013 and it can't play sound properly under a modicum of load. Ridiculous.

Re:Last good version. (1.5)

[Lisias]

On the other hand, that API issue is serious.

For a lot of time, I were using Firefox instead of Chrome because of my NetBanking plugin. Chrome was a bit faster than Firefox at that time, but not that faster - and I enjoyed my Firefox add-ons.

And then, suddenly, Mozilla start to spit new versions in a crazy way, and my NetBanking stop working after every single new (sub)version of Firefox. Hell by hell, I decided Chrome's "hell" was a bit more worthy - at least, I got some faster renderings and the Google's account syncing. Little time after, my NetBanking plugin for Chrome became more stable than the Firefox version, and the rest is history.

Re:Nine, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's exactly what they do. I believe you entirely, because every time I've reported a bug, they've completely ignored it and Firefox has been consistently getting slower and buggier over the years. That's because I'm living on bizarro earth.

Look, Firefox doesn't need your help to die a slow death. Stop lying through your teeth already. It's painful to see this kind of childish nonsense get upvoted because like it's the truth. Even I, who've had some painful experiences with Firefox, am not so petty and vindictive that I have to pretend that Mozilla don't care.

Re:Chrome Is Better

[InTheSwiss]

The difference is Google pay Mozilla to be number one in the search box and, I believe, when people use the search box whereas Chrome begs you to login with your Google account so it can link every god damn thing you do in your browser with your account. Google didn't make Chrome for any other reason than it gets them more and more data. Same reason they made Android and Google+ and Gmail.

Re:Chrome Is Better

[vlueboy]

Even YouTube could as well end the long-lasted HTML5 experiment and just go full HTML5.

Google has some lies and secrets here.
Their defacto behavior, which I'll call a "claim" is that you must have flash to play video xyz even in the HTML5 mode. This happens with MOST popular videos because they are monetized (the secret there is that Google's advertisement modules aren't ready in HTML5 yet)

To debunk this, just load an iPad or iPhone and see if you're *ever* forced to suffer even half of the consecuences... when sir Steve Job decided to ignore Flash on mobile. The takeaway is that faking your UA string with a FF extension yields those nice mp4 files without fuss, and I don't recall seeing video ads in player with that variant. The annoying thing is you have to put up with the mobile navigation, AND as of about 9 months ago, clicking a playlist link to with a preordered list of long series of videos (videogame Let's plays) would link you to a standalone vid. When you have about 100 videos and need to continue from #86, it's a major pain to rely on searches and the unreliable sidebar randomly hinting episode #2 or #98 but not #87. I'm pretty sure there's some express secret reason youtube doesn't like you binging^W playing sequential videos.

Re:Nine, eh?

[Billly Gates]

Wasn't SeaMonkey discontinued in 2009 or something?!

Does it even get security updates? Support HTML 5? I am not a troll here but curious as I thought it was abandonware for quite some time.

"Fun"?

[icannotthinkofaname]

Maybe I'm getting hung up on the wrong thing here, but how the fuck do you measure how "fun" a web-browsing experience is? What does that actually mean? What is it that makes Firefox fundamentally more enjoyable during recreational use that, say, Chrome/Opera/Safari/IE/etc. are missing?

I'm fine with the rest of this and happy birthday to Firefox and all, but what is it that actually makes for a "fun" browsing experience, other than the specific websites that I choose to use?

Re:Nine, eh?

[cyfer2000]

seamonkey project website says you are wrong.

Mozilla did great but the battle is elsewhere

[ciaran_o_riordan]

> we came dangerously close to a world where Microsoft
> Internet Explorer was the only accepted web browser.

We dodged that bullet but now we're heading to a world where facebook.com plus a small few other sites are the internet.

It's not Mozilla's fault but, as Stallman says, freedom is about controlling your computing on your computer, so it's a real problem that a lot of computing is being done on Facebook's servers.

(That said, it would be useful if Mozilla Firefox did more to make its users aware of what free software is - such as putting a clearer link in the menu or in the About dialogue box.)

Re:Nine, eh?

[NoMaster]

Every time Firefox comes up as a topic on /., people say they want it simpler and smaller, and follow the newest trends young browser projects bring.

I agree, it's easy to find examples where the majority on people in a /. discussion are wanting the first two.

But, Mr. Mozilla Developer, can you point to any examples where the majority of people in a /. discussion are wanting the third?

I suspect you might have a lot of trouble with that - which is why I'm just going to sit back and consider the Mozilla developers in general to be an out-of-touch autocratic cabal, and you specifically to be a liar, until there's evidence to the contrary.

Re:Chrome Is Better

[tsa]

I love FF. It has some features that make it much more usable than Safari for me. I never considered Chrome because I'm happy with FF and see no reason to change browsers. And now I have an extra reason not to change.

Re:Firefox is not a browser

[lennier1]

Well, it allows you to visit websites while you're waiting for the next update. That's why people mistake it for a browser.