It's Official!
After two release candidates were presented on October 27th and November 3rd, the much anticipated official launch finally happened on November 9, 2004. Firefox 1.0, available in over 31 languages, was well received by the public. Mozilla even raised money from thousands of donors to promote the launch, and a New York Times ad that ran in mid-December rewarded them by displaying their names along with the Firefox symbol.
Firefox, Part Deux
The browser underwent more changes and new features were continuously added since that day in late 2004, leading up to the major release of version 1.5 and finally version 2.0 on October 24, 2006.
Firefox 2.0 introduced enhanced RSS capabilities, spell-checking within forms, improved tabbed browsing, a sleeker new look, Phishing Protection, Session Restore (which restores your open tabs and web pages in the event of a browser crash or accidental shutdown), and more. This new version really caught on with both the public and with add-on developers, who seemed to produce an endless supply of extensions almost overnight. The power of Firefox continued to grow with the help of a passionate and ingenuitive development community as these add-ons continued to take the browser to new heights.
Firefox, named after the Red Panda found in the Himalayas, Nepal, and southern China, continues to move up the charts in its chase of Internet Explorer and it is going to be exciting to see what comes next.
Going Forward...
June 17, 2008. Download Day. Firefox 3 arrives. Stay tuned...
