The history of Mozilla and Firefox

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/90200-the-history-of-mozilla-and-firefox

by thomas • 15 years ago

15 9 15 years ago

rsoto• 15 years ago

Fuck the ten-page pagination, full article in one page: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/90200-the-history-of-mo...

tingley2• 15 years ago

This omits one of the most interesting parts of the story, which is how Firefox evolved as an offshoot from Mozilla in the first place.

mrseb2• 15 years ago

Yep, very good point. Inserted a paragraph about it on page five ("Firefox 1.0") - thanks :)

bcrescimanno• 15 years ago

Might also check page 2 where it says, "...focus on two of the tools that made up the Mozilla Suite: Firefox and Thunderbird."

Neither Fx nor Tb were part of the app suite--they were both offshoots that, at the time, really violated what the project was aiming for. The story of how Firefox came to be and roguish it was seen within the organization at the time is interesting.

tingley2• 15 years ago

Nice addition, although as a marginal Mozilla contributor at the time (and frequent IRC lurker), I remember a few other principals being involved -- notably Ben Goodger and and Matthew "mpt" Thomas, who seemed to me to be Blake Ross's primary co-conspirators. For a while it was just this skunkworks project called "m/b" (for "mozilla/browser", I believe), and there was a lot of implied frustration/drama related to AOL/NS-internal development process (the pinnacle of which was the doomed Netscape 6.)

I would love to read a real oral history of Firefox someday.

iconfinder• 15 years ago

For more info about the Firefox logo/icon you can read this interview I did with Jon Hicks: http://www.iconfinder.com/blog/15/

untitledwiz• 15 years ago

Documentary on the subject - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig

yuhong• 15 years ago

"You could go one step further and say that without Firefox — without the competition that drove an increase in JavaScript performance and the adherence to standards — we might even be living in a web without Google or Facebook or Twitter."

Huh? Google existed in 2000!

"but back in 2002 there was only one web browser: Internet Explorer. "

one common web browser

The history of Mozilla and Firefox

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