“After 19 months of development, two name changes and more than 8 million downloads of its preview release, the Firefox browser is finally turning 1.0. Firefox, a browser based on the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source development work, was made available for free download at 1 a.m. PST Tuesday,” Paul Festa reports for CNET News. “If the download statistics from preview releases of Firefox are any indication, the open-source browser could be headed for a big debut.”
“Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to command more than 90 percent of the market, with Opera Software’s browser, Apple Computer’s Safari browser and other Mozilla-based browsers making up the difference. Firefox has set its sights on gaining 10 percent of the market by the end of 2005,” Festa reports.
Full article here.
More info and download links for Firefox here.
Firefox is cool, but I urge everybody to try Camino. It behaves like a real os x application, plus it is the fastest browser for mac right now, both in rendering and executing JS. It is still in beta, but nevertheless it’s my default browser already.
1st post! (sorry just kidding!)
Congrats to the Mozilla team for all their hard work. It’s a great browser, 2nd only to Safari.
…In fact I use Safari, Camino and Firefox…Safari is not very good yet when loading complex java pages…
Hey P.T I like Camino too, to be honest all the browsers have their plus and minus points.
I will try the latest build to see about the speed claims. At least IE is dead on the mac.
PS: You beat me to 1st post so your dead after school 😀
Updated to latest version of firefox and all the plugins I had installed ceased to work! Doh! Waste of time.
good to see they got rid of that annoying Expose bug in the final version.
good work mozilla!
Not to happy with Firefox, look like a cheap Safari knock off with a Wintel look about it.
When I load graphics it shows the X in the box or something until it loads, that’s so yesterday.
Well everyone give it a shot, at least they have themes you can change the way it looks.
They are anti-M$ and it is their first release.
Couldn’t get onto the web site, must be very, very busy.
Good sign.
what i like about the firefox is the free adblock plugin /// works great …
..
only thing i dont like is some of the fonts it uses for some webpages .. like slashdot .. have to change it sometime
I use firefox, camino, safari, mozilla on a rotating basis, and yes I agree, they all have pluses and minuses. I do like camino though.
Regardless who develops it, it’s nice to see a growing diversity within browsers. This will make website developers give a second thought to creating IE-only pages.
IE on the Mac is not dead yet, for me anyways. I STILL have to use it for some websites. It really pisses me off. I only want to use Safari or a Mozilla based browser (I don’t notice big speed differences between them).
mark switchers still use it.. hyuk
i’m mostly referring to kids at my uni.. they use the mac and don’t know what the hell the safari icon is.. so they stick with FUGLY IE.. they must think the Mac browsing environment is even worse on a mac
YES! They fixed the problem with expose!! That really pissed me off before!
I still use Explorer for saving “web archives” something that is being added in the next version of Safari. Some pages, such as the Corbis web site, print better in Explorer as well.
Explorer was not a bad browser, hats off to the mac team at Microsoft, they just stopped development on the mac version before they fixed the speed problems.
Safari user 95% of the time.
They also failed to put in a pop-up blocker. BIG oversight!
“They also failed to put in a pop-up blocker. BIG oversight!”
er, Explorer, not Firefox.
Just installed firefox, like the web developer extension… big help to me.
Question: anyone know how to import/copy over my Safari bookmarks into Firefox? I haven’t found a good place with that info.
ideas?