Topic: Firefox seems to show no signs of crashing and burning.

[Clive]

Firefox, the open source browser that blazed onto our desktops back in November 2004, seems to show no signs of crashing and burning.

It shot past the 400 million download mark this week (http://www.itpro.co.uk/news/124690/firefox-downloaded-400-million-times.html) and looks set to continue the trend with Mozilla personnel looking decidedly upbeat about how things are panning out.

Already, the browser has around 18 to 25 per cent of market share from a standing start three years ago when it was first launched. So what makes this web browser gain more popularity daily?

The answer lies in the treatment Microsoft handed out to its Internet Explorer (IE) browser. It would appear that with the browser market pretty much sewn up it could kick back, relax and concentrate on other things. But while this was happening, the internet moved on.

Suddenly new websites popped up taking advantages of new technology. Social networks, Ajax-based websites and web 2.0 all needed a different, non-Microsoft centred approach to content presentation. No-one wanted to rely on ActiveX controls to make their websites do the things they wanted. And for good reason.

Security vulnerability after security vulnerability appeared and the IE was targeted time after time. Hackers saw ActiveX as their route onto a victim's desktop. Fair enough, Microsoft fixed things but for a while it did look like one hole was plugged only for another to spring open.

When Firefox came onto the radar, it promised more security (it didn't run ActiveX) and open standards. It also worked on a variety of platforms, which meant any website that adhered to standards would look the same whether you ran Windows, OS X or Linux.

Not only that, features such as tabbed browsing meant that you didn't need 500 windows open to look at all the websites you wanted to view. As the project was open source, people could suggest new code for the browser and when security vulnerabilities did pop up on Firefox, anyone interested could plough through the code, find the vulnerability and suggest new code to plug the hole.

All-in-all, Firefox offered all of us the opportunity to take part in shaping and securing the internet experience. It also meant that Microsoft had to sit up and take notice of the changes and move with the times.

The internet is a healthier and more vibrant place thanks to a little competition in the browser market.

[Rik]

Amen to that, Clive.

[Reno]

Yup, I barely use IE anymore. FF has me sold. There are certain times when i wouldn't mind it supporting activeX its not really a big deal. M$ really screwed the pooch when they didn't upgrade IE for so long.

[Simon]

I almost exclusively use Firefox on my laptop, as Sea Monkey doesn't seem to be fully Vista ready just yet.  It's come a long way from the early days, when half the websites you tried wouldn't open, and you had to revert to IE.