Firefox Is 7 Years Old, Mozilla Celebrates by Adopting More Cute Firefoxes

Just as Firefox 8 landed, Mozilla is celebrating Firefox's seventh birthday. The first version of the browser surfaced in 2004 and Firefox has been evolving ever since.

That said, it still feels like the beginning especially now that a new version is coming every six weeks. 2011 has seen the release of Firefox 4, a major upgrade on which Mozilla worked for a year and a half.

But it has also seen the release of three more Firefoxes since, culminating with the latest to go stable Firefox 8. And work is also on the way on Firefox 9, 10 and 11.

The switch to the rapid release cycle hasn't been a painless one, but it's been a necessary one.

"Today, we are excited to join together as a global community to celebrate the 7th birthday of Firefox. As the only independent browser with a mission to make the Web better, we are proud of how the last seven years of Firefox have pushed the Web forward," Mozilla wrote.

There have been 11 releases in these seven years, five of them this year alone. Mozilla boasts that the latest Firefox 8 is 32 times faster than Firefox 1.0.

Mozilla is not planning any huge event to celebrate, though teams around the world certainly have something planned for the birthday.

As luck would have it, just as Firefox was celebrating its seventh birthday, new firefox (red panda) cubs were in need of some care at the Knoxville Zoo and Mozilla once again jumped at the opportunity to help.

"To celebrate, Mozilla has once again adopted firefox (a.k.a red panda) cubs at the Knoxville Zoo. For the next few months, you can watch these baby firefoxes play, live and grow via a 24 hour live video stream at Firefox Live," Mozilla explained.

You can visit Firefox Live to see the baby firefoxes in action all day long, except if they're not sleeping of course.