14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox is turning five today, a nice, round number for the browser that has been a central component in forming the web as we know it today. Launched on November 9, 2004, Firefox 1.0 was an experimental branch of the Mozilla project with some pretty big goals, to challenge Internet Explorer's complete dominance of the browser market. Five years later, while still having less than half of IE's market share, it can be said that Firefox achieved everything it set out to do and then some, users have a much greater choice when it comes to browsers and developers enjoy a much more open web.
The browser now boasts some 330 million monthly active users and about one quarter of the browser market. It also showed people that they could have control over their experience and browser with the thousands of add-ons available from third-party developers. With over 7,000 to choose from, most people will probably find something very useful to them and, to date, as much as half of the users have installed at least one add-on. At the same time, Firefox paved the way for web standards, making it easier for developers to create a site that would work and look the same in any browser, though there's still some work to be done in this department. It also spurred others to create their own browsers, most notably Google, which launched Chrome about a year ago.
But Mozilla isn't dwelling on the past and is looking at the future and what it plans to achieve in the next five years. “Over the next five years everyone can expect that the browser should take part in a few new areas – to act as the user agent it should be. Issues around data, privacy and identity loom large. You will see the values of Mozilla’s public benefit mission reflected in our product choices in these areas to make users safer and help them understand what it means to share data with web sites,” Christopher Blizzard writes on the hacks.mozilla.org blog.
One thing that Mozilla believes will play a big role in the future is video and the space is about to get a lot more interesting with the introduction of new technologies proposed in the HTML5 standard draft. With full support for video in the HTML standard and open audio and video codecs becoming more powerful and popular, developers won't be required to use third-party plugins like Adobe Flash or pay licenses for proprietary codecs.
Another big focus will be on the mobile space, which is set to grow tremendously over the next few years. As mobile phones become more powerful and capable, they are also becoming increasingly connected to the web, so a great browser is crucial. Mozilla plans to conquer this space as well with a mobile Firefox version, which has been in development for a while now under the codename Fennec. It's not quite ready for the prime time yet, but it's set to reach 1.0 just as mobile-Internet use is about to explode. For the time being, though, Mozilla plans to have a big party around the world to celebrate the occasion.