Topic: Firefox celebrates fifth birthday

[Clive]

The fifth birthday of web browser Firefox is being celebrated this week, as the first ever release of Firefox was issued on 9 November back in 2004.

At the time of release, Internet Explorer dominated 99 per cent of the browser market.

Firefox is now the second most popular browser on the market, still behind IE but with a 24 per cent share of the global browser market.
It was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross to try and combat a software bloat with their Mozilla Suite (now known as Sea Monkey).

It was initially called the Phoenix browser which was later changed to Mozilla Firebird. Pressure from the Firebird database server, however, forced the Mozilla Foundation to change it to Firefox back in February 2004. Firefox 1.5 Deer Park was then released in the November of that year.

[Rik]

Happy birthday, FF, you really changed the world.

[Simon]

It seems longer, but I was using the Mozilla suite before Firefox came along, and Netscape before that.

[sam]

still cant believe how many people using IE.

[Rik]

For most people, Sam, I suspect they don't know there's a choice.