

Firefox turns 10 years old today (Phoenix v0.1) - mburns
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/0.1.html#new
Phoenix 0.1 was released September 23, 2002
======
shmerl
History of Mozilla UI:

[http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/moz...](http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/mozilla/history.html)

[http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/moz...](http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/mozilla/history2.html)

[http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/moz...](http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/mozilla/history3.html)

[http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/moz...](http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.andrewturnbull.net/mozilla/historyfx.html)

History of Mozilla mascot:

<http://www.davetitus.com/mozilla/>

Archive of old browsers and original Mcom.com site:

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2008/03/happy-run-some-old-web-
brows...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2008/03/happy-run-some-old-web-browsers-
day/)

<http://home.mcom.com/archives/>

<http://home.mcom.com>

~~~
GertG
From that overview:

"This newer strategy...with fewer releases but more features and changes
manifesting in each one...has held through to subsequent Firefox releases to
date."

History sure changes fast.

~~~
betterth
Well, Chrome cooked their goose with a totally different methodology. A little
agility is never a bad thing when you're being out-competed by the same
company who pays most of your bills.

------
acomjean
10 years ago the browser market was very different. ie dominant and many sites
(banking in particular) "ie only". Mac had a version of ie and linux as a web
surfing platform was wanting.

Firefox has been a good thing.

for those using firefox, the browser has more information.

go to the address about:mozilla

Maybe "information" is a stretch, but its fun.

~~~
DanBC
A little bit more than 10 years ago there was IE on Unix.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX>)

~~~
TheGateKeeper
I actually have a copy of that still.

------
tree_of_item
>You said this is a lean, lightweight browser, but it's 8MB! I laugh at your
silly lies!

>Take it easy, sport. Phoenix has many files that override those in Mozilla,
but it also has a new set of files. These files render a ton of files in
Mozilla unnecessary, but we haven't yet stopped packaging the old files. It
also still contains the modern theme and all the composer UI. In short, we
haven't done any work yet to minimize the size, but we expect to be able to
hit 6MB with a little work.

Things have changed quite a bit.

~~~
dave1010uk
Firefox is currently 17MB. It's pretty amazing that that size includes (off
tge top of my head): JavaScript interpreter/compiler, HTML4 & 5 parser, XML
parser, CSS parser, graphics engine, layout engine, WebGL, lots of
typographical features, plugin API, extension API, DOM, BOM, developer tools.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
It's much less impressive when you consider that Opera offers basically all of
that, plus a built-in email client, and built-in BitTorrent support, and a
built-in IRC client, and built-in ad blocking, among other features. And the
largest Windows installer of the current 12.02 version is merely about 10.5
MB, too.

~~~
mns2
How is bloatware impressive?

The vast majority of the world will never need to use any of that.

Built-in ad blocking is about the only useful thing you listed, and Ad-Block
and ABP are widely used.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
I think you missed the point. What is impressive is that Opera offers much
more functionality than Firefox, yet its installer is nearly half as large.
Whether or not the additional functionality offered by Opera is useful is
irrelevant to this discussion.

------
nsns
Congratulations! A toast to one of the most prominent (and, alas, one of the
last, with Wikipedia) non-consumerist-centered tools of the web.

~~~
ibotty
what about most webserver, middlewares, web programming languages, databases,
etc?

------
sabret00the
Happy birthday. Thank you for serving me with my best interests at heart for
so long.

------
joneil
I started using Phoenix at v0.3 and remember just how "new" it felt. At the
time I was still running Windows (maybe even 98?) and was experimenting with
Linux, but hated the netscape/mozilla options. Phoenix was fast, had tabs, a
popup blocker, and no ads (unlike Opera). I was a proud user then, and I think
they've done remarkably well given the massive competition from three
commercial software giants - I'm still a happy user today. Well done Mozilla.

------
pan69
The Firefox Wikipedia page states:

"Initial release November 9, 2004; 7 years ago" [1]

Maybe they're referring to the 1.0 release? I do remember using Firefox way
earlier than that, it must have been 2000 or 2001. I guess those were 0.x
releases. Wikipedia doesn't seem to say anything about that.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox>

~~~
varunsrin
Yes, I'm pretty sure I was using Firefox 0.7 in 2003 or early 2004, so that
November date must be about 1.0 release.

EDIT: It was called Firebird back then, too

------
mariuz
Here is my guide to run it under ubuntu karmik
[http://mapopa.blogspot.ro/2009/11/firefox-01-aka-phoenix-
on-...](http://mapopa.blogspot.ro/2009/11/firefox-01-aka-phoenix-on-ubuntu-
karmik.html)

My guess the same instructions should work on ubuntu 12.04 lts

------
chris_wot
It's interesting that 0.3 had the ability to right click on an image to block
the server it comes from... I'm assuming this is a preference or an extension
nowadays!

<http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/0.3.html#new>

~~~
sabret00the
right click on image -> view image info -> [tick] block images from
domainname.tld

------
RyanMcGreal
After making the jump from Netscape 4.5/4.72 to Mozilla 1.2, I stayed on
Mozilla until Firefox 1.0 came out. I've been using Firefox ever since. I've
got Chrome installed, mostly to check that websites work properly in it, but
it never pulled me away from Firefox.

------
peterwwillis
I really miss Phoenix. The tiny size, almost non-existent feature set,
incredible snappy speed, and still wide compatibility with most (if not all)
websites of the day.

Then there's Firefox. It's taken years to get to a point where you aren't
swapping from three page loads. It has hardware graphics rendering and built-
in video codecs. An entire development environment. And "helpful" features
that try to guess what you're thinking and end up using more bandwidth, i/o
and cpu than is necessary.

I know, i'm a luddite, i'm old-fashioned, i'm hindering progress. But get off
my lawn! I just want a single tool that does something well. What's wrong with
just releasing plugins for the features that aren't strictly text and image
web content?

------
rangibaby
Already?! HB Firefox. And thanks for showing us that there was a better way
than IE6.

------
starik36
I remember installing it for the first time and it felt just right. The other
browsers at the time (Mozilla Suite, Netscape 6.x, IE) just felt so bulky.

You could tell right away that this software was going to go places.

------
yenoham
I never thought I'd get to a time where web browser milestones began to make
me feel old.

------
dimitar
Early Firefox felt really responsive and it was more functional and safe than
IE.

What happened? I still use it, but I definitely don't feel the same about it.

~~~
AJ007
I was a big fan of Phoenix. What bothers me about modern Firefox is forced
updates combined with surprise browser resets that break plug-ins and delete
settings data. A few more of these and I'll finally have to switch 100% to
Chromium (except for site testing.)

~~~
skymt
Forced updates? Firefox has the usual set of update options, from automated
and invisible to completely manual: <http://i.imgur.com/eh84n.png>

------
dain
Second line down "earch" should be "Search", in case anyone at Mozilla is
reading this.

------
noibl
What, no gimmick? PR fail.

(Not that it seems to have done much for Opera, but Mozilla is in a better
position to capitalise.)

