Mozilla Firefox (known simply as Firefox) is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundationand its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is available for Windows, OS X and Linux operating systems, with its mobileversions available for Android and Firefox OS. It uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards.
Firefox was created in 2002 under the name "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who wanted a standalone browser rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. Even during its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular by its testers and was praised for its speed, security and add-ons compared with Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released in November 2004, and was highly successful with 60 million downloads within nine months, which was the first time that Internet Explorer's dominance was challenged. Firefox is considered the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla Foundation was created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL.
As of February 2015, Firefox has between 12% and 20% of worldwide usage as a "desktop" browser, making it, per different sources, the third most popular web browser. Still, the browser is most popular in some countries, as a desktop browser (or even across all platforms), such as Indonesia and Germany at 48%,43% of the market share, respectively. According to Mozilla, as of December 2014, there are half a billion Firefox users around the world.
Features
Main article: Features of Firefox
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 toWOFF 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
See also: Browser security
Firefox uses a sandbox security model, and limits scripts from accessing data from other websites based on the same-origin policy. It also provides support for smart cardsto web applications, for authentication purposes. It uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol.The freely available HTTPS Everywhere add-on enforces HTTPS, even if a regular HTTP URL is entered. Firefox now supports HTTP/2.
The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" (up to US$3000 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 reported 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 nine 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 fifth most vulnerable desktop software, with Internet Explorer as the eighth, and Google Chrome as the first.
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," she said.
In October 2009, Microsoft's security engineers acknowledged that Firefox was vulnerable to a security issue found in the 'Windows Presentation Foundation' browser plug-in since February of that year. A .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Windows Update had silently installed the vulnerable 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 the 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 was then delayed so Mozilla developers could "collect and analyze data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies." Mozilla also collaborated with Stanford University's "Cookie Clearinghouse" project to develop a blacklist and whitelist of sites that will be used in the filter.
Version 23, released in August 2013, followed the lead of its competitors by blocking iframe, stylesheet, and script resources served from non-HTTPS servers embedded on HTTPS pages by default. Additionally, JavaScript could also no longer be disabled through Firefox's preferences, and JavaScript was automatically re-enabled for users who upgraded to 23 or higher with it disabled. The change was made due to its use across the majority of websites, the potential repercussions on non-experienced users who are unaware of its impact, along with the availability of extensions such as NoScript, which can disable JavaScript in a more controlled fashion. The following release added the ability to disable JavaScript through the developer tools for testing purposes.
In January 2015, TorrentFreak reported that using Firefox when connected to the internet using a VPN can be a serious security issue due to the browser's support forWebRTC.
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