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News
After 19 months of
development, two name changes and more than 8 million
downloads of its preview release, the Firefox browser
finally turned 1.0.
The browser, based on
the Mozilla Foundation's open-source development work, was
made available for free download early Tuesday.
Firefox 1.0 isn't significantly different from the preview
releases launched in recent months. Mozilla changed its
default start page to appeal to new users, but other
changes involve minor performance improvements and bug
fixes.
The release could nonetheless have a big effect if
prerelease trends propel the open-source browser into
serious contention with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
And the Mozilla Foundation is already cooking up its next
moves to challenge IE's dominance. Now that it has the
Firefox 1.0 milestone under its belt, the foundation has
identified three areas for future growth and development:
cell phone and small-device browsing, desktop search
integration, and OEM (original equipment manufacturer)
distribution.
"It's been a tremendous year, and we can't see anything but
upside the way things are heading right now," said Chris
Hofmann, the Mozilla Foundation's director of engineering.
"We're just starting the planning for the initiatives that
are going to be important in the coming year."
But Microsoft says it doesn't feel threatened by Firefox.
Just days after the launch of Firefox 1.0, Microsoft
executives defended IE, saying it's no less secure than
other browsers and doesn't lack any important features.
At a security roundtable discussion in Sydney, Australia,
on Thursday, Ben English, Microsoft's security and
management product manager, told attendees that IE
undergoes "rigorous code reviews."
"Because IE is ubiquitous, you hear a lot more about it,
but I don't think that Internet Explorer is any less secure
than any other browser out there," English said.
(according to the
source, www.cnet.com).
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