Mozilla Firefox, sometimes referred simply as the Fox Internet Browser is a graphical web browser primarily developed by the Mozilla Corporation. A large number of external contributors also aided in its advent. Officially abbreviated as Fx and FF, it started as one of the Navigator browser components of the Mozilla Application Suite. Fox Internet Browser replaced the Mozilla Suite as the chief component of the Mozilla project under the order of the Mozilla Foundation. The current stable release is version 2.0.0.4, released on May 30, 2007. According to W3Counter, 24.82% of the world's web surfers use the Mozilla browser.



- A Technical Explanation in Brief

The Fox Browser is platform independent, i.e. capable of running on every existing OS in the market. It became possible due to the unofficially porting of the source code (porting is the transfer of data from one computer to another via a cable that links connecting ports) to other operating systems. These include FreeBSD, OS/2, Solaris, RISC OS, SkyOS, BeOS and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

- Legal Issues regarding Porting

Since the browser is free and is open source software, it is freely available. Details of the copyright exemption can be found in the Mozilla tri-license.

- Fox Internet Browser Features

Tabbed browsing, an incremental find (through Find toolbar), live bookmarking, an integrated download manager and a search system are some of its most powerful features. Customizable with downloadable extensions, themes and advanced preferences that are not present in the Options dialog, all these can be accessed through the about: config option. For web developers, Fox Internet Browser provides an environment for using built-in tools or extensions like the built-in JavaScript Console and the DOM Inspector. Add-ons like themes; extensions like Source Editor, Grease Monkey and IE Tab make special tasks easier; they also improve an user browsing experience.

- What software standards does it support?

* HTML

* XML

* XHTML

* CSS

* ECMAScript or JavaScript

* DOM

* MathML

* DTD

* XSLT

* Xpath

* PNG images with alpha transparency

* SVG standards

* Standard proposals created by WHATWG.

- Security Features

SSL/TLS protects communications through Fox Internet Browser with the web servers. This involves strong cryptography when the HTTPS protocol is used.

- Gen Nxt Fox Internet Browser

The Version 3.0, based on Gecko 1.9 (layout engine) and the Cairo graphics library (the rendering layer) is expected to hit the market in November 2007. This version shall not run on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows NT 4.0 because of a lack of support for Cairo graphics. The Mac version of Fox Internet Browser 3 will only run on OS X 10.3 or higher, but, unlike previous versions, will have a native Cocoa widget interface.

Native support shall also be included in version 3.0 for micro-formats along with the missing features from version 2. This includes the overhauled Places system for storing bookmarks and history in an SQL - like backend