WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The Firefox Story 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.880 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.520 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.560 I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:24.959 it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:31.160 episode originally published on December twelve, two thousand, twelve. Twelve, 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:36.600 twelve twelve. So what did we cover? Well, it's the 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:41.560 Firefox story. Yep, the web browser known as Firefox. Now great, 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:45.519 this is not a beginning, middle, and end story because 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:48.920 Firefox continued well after two thousand twelve. But I thought 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.919 you might like to hear about the history of the browser, 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:56.800 So let's listen to this classic episode. Yeah. So, you know, 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:00.440 there's this guy Tim burns Lee works so its cern 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:02.840 like I feel like I've heard his name. Dude came 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.840 up with this neat way of displaying information using on 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:12.160 network connections, which would eventually blossom into the beautiful flower 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.600 we know as the World Wide Web. We probably don't 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:17.920 call it that so frequently anymore. If you if you 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.039 read like the stuff from the the early nineties Worldwide 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.080 Web and Information super Highway, what that they seem to 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.600 be required in every single news story. Yeah, well we've 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.559 started a little loopy here, but yeah, it's it's clear, 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.120 and we haven't we we haven't mentioned it in quite 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:36.880 some time, but we have mentioned it on multiple occasions 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:42.520 that the Internet is basically a medium of communication between computers. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.959 It's it's a network of networks. Uh. Your computer hooks 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:48.080 up to the Internet, and you can send information in 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.080 a number of different ways. A lot of them are 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:55.320 our pass a now or or less used than others. 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.960 I mean people like Gopher or using transmission protocols like 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.720 Gopher and and waste. Um. You know, people just don't 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.080 do that very much. Using that is less used than 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.600 it used to be. UM has certainly used quite a bit, 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:11.920 and still quite a few people are using fault transfer 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:16.440 protocol sure, sure, Um the different instant messenger protocols. They 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:20.320 none of these are the Worldwide Web. The world Wide 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.240 Web basically puts a very public pretty face on it, 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.280 in some cases less than pretty, especially if you don't 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.560 like crawling graphics and and MIDI files. You know, this 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:32.640 is the old you know, this is the the user 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.959 friendly version of what the Internet has to offer. For 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.799 a lot of people, they thought the Worldwide web and 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.560 internet were synonymous. Not really the case, but we wanted 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:48.160 to talk about a particular browser and a company organization 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.360 that that helped bring this browser about and how it 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.560 kind of became a power player. Actually it was the 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:58.920 power Player for a while, or an ancestor of it was, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.679 and then it faded to obscurity, rose from the ashes. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.239 But we'll get into that. So we're talking about Firefox 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.000 in general. But to to understand Firefox and the story 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.160 behind Firefox, you actually have to go back quite a 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.920 way as well, before there was ever any sort of 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.959 Firefox web browser. So all the way back to nine 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.200 two and in ninety two, we're talking the earliest days 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.240 of the web at this point, and it seems kind 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.240 of crazy. I mean, we're recording this in so that's 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.320 you know, just twenty years. But um, a fellow by 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.040 the name of Mark and Reeson. Uh, basically this was 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.160 this was a college project. Yeah, he and Eric Bina 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:39.440 or or Bina, I'm not sure how to say his 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:42.280 last name. Yeah, they began to work on a browser 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:46.680 for x Windows on Unix computers and this was something 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:48.920 that they decided to start working on this after being 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:53.800 shown the work that Tim burners Lee had been doing 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:55.640 over at CERN and they said, wow, you know, we 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:59.600 should start creating a browser that could access this sort 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.960 of stuff. And so they worked together and they created 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:08.640 something they called Mosaic, which was one of the earliest 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.680 web browsers. Yeah, and it really it. It sort of 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:16.080 helped popularize the World Wide Web for a lot of people. Um, 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:17.720 for a couple of reasons. One it was it was 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.200 not it was reasonably nice to look at, it was 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.839 easy to use, UM. But it was also free because 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.240 it was well, again a college project, so it was 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.520 one of those things that was just offered. Now you 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.120 kind of had to know where to find it. UM. 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.119 You kind of had to know. I have an idea 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:36.119 what the world Wide Web was, and at that point, 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:40.320 it was uh, sort of a hobbyist thing. UM. You know, 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.040 I I used when I used bit net back in 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:49.760 in the day's. Immediately proceeding that, I was using basically email, um, 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.760 using chat. But I really had no idea what the 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.880 web was. And I started doing some reading around around 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.320 that time and said, no, this this looks kind of interesting. UM. 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.600 And you know, I didn't have a web client for 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:06.239 Miamiga at the time. UM. But I started using Max 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.760 around that time and found out that there was a 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.360 version of Mosaic available for which I actually purchased with 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.000 a book that told you how to use the darned 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.680 thing and it came on a floppy disk, and so 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.240 I loaded Mosaic from from from that and got started 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.320 on the web. Yeah, some interesting connections we should we 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.000 should talk about. I mean, you're going to find out 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:27.880 that there are a lot of connections to various web 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:30.920 browsers out there just coming from Mosaic. One of the 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.400 earliest and to me, really interesting ones is that in 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:40.680 n company called Spyglass Incorporated licensed the Mosaic browser. Yeah, 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:45.760 and they began to develop its own code base based 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.680 on Mosaic, and then they licensed that code base to 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.920 Microsoft and that would become part of what would eventually 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:59.160 be Internet Explorer. So Mosaic and Internet Explorers share some 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:02.680 some code. You go, way, way, way, way way back, um, 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:04.760 and it's uh, you know, that's to me, that's a 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:09.400 very interesting thing, especially when you look later on down 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:14.159 the timeline of the evolution of browsers out there on 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:18.000 the market. Yeah. Yeah, Now, of course that that's less 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:22.440 of a direct lineage than what uh and Reason and 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.320 company would do when they decided to go ahead and 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.000 make some money off of this thing, which is the 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.000 founding of the company Netscape. Yeah. First it was called 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.640 Mosaic Communications, but they renamed it before too long to 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:40.520 Netscape Communications. Uh. They being Mark and Reason and Jim Clark. Uh. 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:44.760 This was same year that spy Glass incorporated as licensing 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.400 Mosaic itself. Uh. And they come up with the the 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:52.520 browser Netscape, and this was a a pay for browser. 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.680 You would buy the browser. I bought a copy off 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.080 the shelf, shrink wrapped copy of Netscape too, and it 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:02.440 became the commune Gator. It actually became quite popular. And 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.240 there are gator, I'm sorry navigator. There are a lot 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:07.160 of a lot of Do you want to go back? No? No, 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:09.200 well okay, we'll just keep going then. All right, Hey, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.240 guess what, guys, sometimes we go back anyway. And that 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.240 escape was that is very rare. Though. I remember I 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.400 remember the uh, the little window and the and the 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.160 right upper right part of the screen, which you know, 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:23.320 if you've used the web for a while, you remember 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:25.280 that the little thing that would tell you that it's 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.800 actually working. Um, it wasn't the you know thing from 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:33.880 left to right in the navigation bar. Yeah, the address bar, 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:36.920 I guess. But yeah, back in Netscape navigator days, they 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.800 had an old ship's wheel that was so nice. We 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:46.320 call that the helm. Anyway, the the the browser became popular, 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:50.400 it kind of well. It introduced and a concept called extensions, 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.280 which most people are familiar with these days. Extensions extend 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.480 the features of a browser by I'll let you and 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.160 saw some new code, that is it some added functionality. 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:07.240 This gave websites, uh, or people who were developing websites 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:12.760 the ability to include stuff that wasn't natively supported by 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:17.200 HTML because the browsers were able to interpret the new 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.920 code and and render it properly on the screen so 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.280 that you're getting the experience that the people wanted you 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:26.640 to have, the people being the web developers and uh. 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.720 Around that time, in the early nineties, Netscape was doing 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:32.960 really well. In fact, it might have had a market 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.120 share as high as eight percent of the browser market 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.920 at that time, and that's pretty remarkable considering that it 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:42.760 was a pay for browser. Yeah, at that point, Netscape 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.640 was was writing very high in the market. Um, you know, 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.240 of course, they were competing with online service providers like 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:54.240 a O L and compy serve UM. But the web 0:08:54.280 --> 0:09:01.360 basically was was netscapes to lose and boy, yeah at 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.840 the beginning of the end we escape. Now, see when 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.840 you're talking about the possibility of paying you for your 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:12.600 web browser versus a competitor that comes along and offers 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:17.560 one for free, UM, that's freely downloadable and has the 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:22.520 muscle of somebody really big behind it, like I don't know, Microsoft, 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:27.679 like Steve Balmer, it's a big guy. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.599 launches Windows and it has the web browser that's included 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:36.400 with Windows is Internet Explorer. Now. Remember Internet Explorer was 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:40.800 built partially upon that code base from Mosaic, and it was, 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.360 as Chris was saying, free of charge. You could download 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.240 it freely and use it yourself, so you didn't have 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:49.240 to buy a copy of a browser. And it even 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.439 came with Windows, so you didn't even have to bother 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:55.000 with it, right if you If you bought a new computer, 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.440 then you had Internet Explorer built right in there. In fact, 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.320 that ended up causing some problems. Uh, there were some 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.920 issues about Internet Explorer being tied so tightly into the 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:10.680 UM the operating system experience on Windows that it brought 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:14.199 up some antitrust issues for Microsoft down line. But that's 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.240 really more of a Internet Explorer story, not so much 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.320 of Firefox story. So right, let's go back over to 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.920 what's going on. It took some time, but Internet Explorer, 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.080 even though it was free, I mean, it did not 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.800 immediately take over like it wasn't. It wasn't an overnight 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:35.120 now turnaround. It took about four generations of Internet Explorer 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:40.320 for it to catch up to Netscape. Meanwhile, Netscape branched out. 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.240 They did more than just used Netscape Navigator. They also 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.599 wanted to create an entire suite of tools that you 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:52.200 would use for email and for um using that in 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.360 some of the other stuff. And they built a larger 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.200 suite so you you had an option. You could go 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.400 with Netscape Navigator if you just wanted to use the web, 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.360 or a suite that they called Escape Communicator, which had 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:09.480 the greater functionality. Unfortunately, in doing this, they gradually and 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:13.359 this is common, uh, you know, it's happened into Microsoft 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:17.520 and many many others. Uh, the code gradually became more bloated, 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:23.040 more resource intensive, if you will, um, and made load 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.480 time slower, made things more difficult. So now you have 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:31.480 a you know, a heavyweight Internet heavyweight and Netscape going 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:36.839 against uh, the the net newbie Microsoft. But Microsoft has 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:42.199 the leaner, more integrated browser in this case and again free. 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.520 So yeah, by that fourth generation of Internet Explorer, we 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.560 started to see things switch around to the point where 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.400 it was it was clear that Internet Explorer was going 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:57.720 to run away with it. So in n uh Netscape 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.680 Communications made a big decision, and yes, they decided that 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:06.360 they would offer Netscape, the Netscape browser for free. Yes, 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:11.520 and that they would freely offer up the the the 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.880 source code so that it would become an open source project. 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.080 So this, in other words, you could be a developer 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:20.280 and go in and you could tweak Netscape and have 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.320 your own version of Netscape and under the right you know, 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.520 you had to follow certain rules, but you could do that. 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:32.160 The community very quickly became huge and there was a 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:37.520 new name for this project. It was called the Mozilla project. Yes, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.920 now I understand that the the name for Mozilla came 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:47.800 from it's sort of a fudged portmanteau, which is a 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:53.920 combination of words for mosaic killer or mosaic killer. Um. 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.320 Of course that took on the form of dinosaur because 0:12:57.320 --> 0:12:59.760 it makes people. The name Mozilla makes people think of 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.679 god Zilla. Um, so they of course didn't want to 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:09.480 I'm sure copyright infringement. So Mozilla's dinosaur monster, lizard giant 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.520 thing is that red instead of green and really bears 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.079 no resemblance to uh, to Godzilla, although the it's more 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.760 like a toyrnosaurus or maybe of a lesser raptor. Yes, 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.679 now there and there have also been multiple incarnations of 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:26.600 the design for the critter. But yeah, so it looks 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:30.280 nothing like a Firefox into that right, the most little 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.960 project launches, but it would not be until two thousand 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:38.400 two before they released Mozilla one point oh. And this 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:42.600 was a browser that included email client functionality among other features. 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.160 But at that point Internet Explorer was dominant in the market. 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:50.640 It had a market share. So we're talking about a 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:54.760 time where you know, we went from ninety four or 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:58.400 so where uh that Escape had about eight percent market 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.520 share right to two thousand two where I e now 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.559 has of the market share. So this is a good 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:09.560 thing to point out. Things change, really, Yeah, market share 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.840 can change dramatically from one from one decade to the next, 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:15.920 or even in just the span of a few years. 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:18.920 The reason why that's important to remember is that we 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.120 always talk about market share as if it's the most 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.480 important thing in the world in some cases, like you know, 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:29.360 talk about and smartphone adoption or whatever. Um. But it's 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.840 true that these things can change dramatically, and someone who's 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.600 on top and you would think, oh, this guy is 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.720 going to dominate the market forever, could very easily become 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.120 and also ran in just a few years. Chris and 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:45.240 I will have more to say about Firefox in just 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:55.080 a moment, but first, let's take a quick break. People 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.000 talk about the villain the blank here killer, and you know, 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.120 those long term listeners will remember that I brought this 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.520 up before. It drives me crazy when people talk about 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.000 the fill in the blank killer because in just a 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:08.800 few years, they'll be talking about whatever that was killer. 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.560 And and in some cases they don't kill so much 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.720 as carve out a niche market and uh and go 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:20.080 for it. I mean, um, you know, in this case, uh, 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.560 Internet Explorer would have been the Netscape killer, and in 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:29.120 some cases they did. Um, but Mozilla would come back 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.080 and carve out its own space. And then Chrome came 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.960 along years later, and it is you know, that's it's 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:37.080 sort of what's going on right now? At the time, 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.600 Save as it Ever was you Save as it Ever was, so, uh, well, 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:43.640 go ahead, And I was just gonna say, some community 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.920 members of Mozilla, what's interesting is you've got the Mozilla project, 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:49.880 You've got the Mozilla Browser. You still have people in 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.120 the community who don't necessarily think that the way that 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.520 the Mozilla browsers developing is the right way to go. 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.880 And that's the beauty of having an open source community 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.840 is that you don't you know, there's not necessarily just 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.880 one path that you can take. You can have multiple 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.320 paths to try and create the best browser experience possible. 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:11.400 Some of those community members decided that there was there 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:13.640 were some issues they had with Mozilla. One of them 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.800 was that they felt that it was suffering from feature creep, 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:23.200 which is the same thing we were talking about with Creep. Yeah, 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.040 he turns into like Dracula and then Mummy and then 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:29.120 the creature for the Black Lagoon. And I've been watching 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:33.160 too much Supernatural relately watched in an episode last night 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.560 that was about that. Anyway, No, the idea that that 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.520 they were again Mozilla was starting to become in their 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:43.080 mind bloated the way Netscape head and they did not 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:46.480 really think that that was something they should pursue. They 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:49.160 thought that perhaps they should take the code and make 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.640 something else out of it. So this group created a 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:58.120 browser that they called Phoenix, as in rising from the ashes. 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:03.040 Now they were a legendary that Yeah, yes, the one 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.040 that was featured heavily in the documentary series Harry Potter. 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:11.280 Um the uh the but it is it fitting? It 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:14.480 is a fitting image for this browser, which at one 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:19.320 time had been Netscape. So Phoenix rises from the ashes, 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:22.240 but also tends to fall again because it turns out 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:24.480 someone else has the name Phoenix, so they can't really 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:28.560 use it. So they renamed it Firebird. That caused a 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.760 problem because there was another organization that used the word 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:37.320 firebird about distributed software, so that was an issue. They 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:39.960 ended up thinking, okay, okay, okay, we'll name it something else. 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:45.359 We'll call it a firefox. Yeah. No, firefox has the 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:49.760 benefit here of going with the fire part at the beginning. Um, 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:53.440 but adds another very cool animal image in there. Now, 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.960 a firefox isn't actually a fox. It is, in fact 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:01.240 a red panda, which, in my opinion or really neat animals. 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:05.720 But you know, um and actually recently, UM, the Mozilla 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.800 Foundation has sponsored uh the well being of a couple 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.919 of red pandas in the Knoxville, Tennessee Zoo. Uh. They 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.520 even had a webcam up which had the little critters 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:19.560 running around and playing and sleeping and sleeping which they 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:21.399 always seemed to be doing right as it tuned in. 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:26.480 Oh look there's and settling down for a nap um 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.040 In two thousand three was when Mozilla created the Mozilla Foundation, 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:33.080 which is an independent, nonprofit organization. It's mainly meant to 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.080 manage the daily operations of the Mozilla project. Yeah. Well, 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.400 and we didn't really touch on this, but the remnants 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:44.040 of Netscape were purchased by America Online, so a O 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:51.360 L bought Netscape. But the Mozilla Foundation has the ability 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:53.520 to to go off and do their own thing here, 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.720 so they have. Yeah. Yeah. So two thousand four was 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:01.120 when Firefox one point oh was released, and uh, it 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:05.280 became a very popular browser very quickly. In less than 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:09.920 a year, they had over one hundred million downloads. So 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:14.440 Firefox was quickly kind of viewed as the the alternative 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:18.320 to Internet Explorer. I can hear all the opera fans 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.560 out there screaming at me. But you know that's the 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:24.160 popular The popular view was that Firefox. If you didn't 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.520 want to use Internet Explore, you should use Firefox. Yeah. Now, 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.399 I had actually been using Opera up until that point, 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:34.280 um as. I specifically remember a friend of mine going, hey, 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:35.880 you know, I know you like Opera, but you really 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:38.560 should try this Firefox out. And I was kind of 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.280 skeptical because I was one of the people who was 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:44.560 cranky at Netscape for getting so darn bloated. I tried 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.080 Netscape Communicator for a long time and it just drove 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.080 me crazy. And I didn't like Internet Explorer for the 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:53.359 Mac very much. So yeah, once, once I tried it, 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:57.640 I got hooked. Give you guys some reference two thousand four. 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.600 That's around the same time that companies like my Space 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.600 and Facebook are starting to to make a name for themselves. 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.240 Of course, at that point, Facebook is strictly a college 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.320 only experience, but yeah, that's that gives you an idea 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.600 of what's going on around that time. It would be 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.960 two years before version two point oh of Firefox came 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.480 out that they would update. They made lots of frequent 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:23.360 updates to the Firefox browser, but they were all very 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:27.439 incremental without major changes to the code. Point releases, you 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.040 can't say. So it wasn't until you know, it's two 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.720 years after a debut before two point I came out, 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:35.400 and it was another two years when version three point 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:37.439 oh came out. So it was two thousand eight. Uh. 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:39.400 The reason why I'm bringing this up is it will 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.760 be interesting when we get to talk about what version 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.159 is currently how in the wild right now as of 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:48.399 the recording of this podcast. But but yeah, two thousand 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:50.320 eight was when version three point I was released and 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:54.080 Firefox hit of the market share. Now, UM, I'd like 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.199 to bring this up because the Mozilla Foundation does a 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:01.240 lot more than just uh than us in Firefox and 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:07.159 pandas red pandas they're so cute um uh. They also 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.439 had split off some of the other code that was 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.280 part of Communicator. For example, Thunderbird, which is their email client. 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.399 UM is UH is sort of the the version that 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.800 that used to be the mail client. And there there 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:27.199 was a unified UM basically the derivative of Communicator itself, 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:31.239 the suite, which was called Sea Monkey UM and UH. 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.760 They released um early versions of that. Thunderbird one point 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.520 oh came out on December seven, two thousand four and 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.399 um uh, Sea Monkey one point oh came out on 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:45.520 January two thousand and six. Now, both of these are 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.000 probably not as in as much in the public eye, 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:53.639 Thunderbird more so, but Sea Monkey certainly not as much 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.239 as as either one of those two. Um, but they 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:00.159 still do work on those projects and over time. I 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.120 just wanted to make sure that we mentioned them. But overtime, 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:05.800 Mozilla has brought Thunderbird up to the same basically the 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:10.520 same version system that firefoxes on. We have a little 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:13.240 bit more to say about Firefox, but before we get there, 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:23.440 we're gonna take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.600 two thousand eleven, we have Firefox version fourth point oh released. 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:28.359 I remember that was a big deal. It was the 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:33.000 one that that came out. And then, um so between 0:22:33.000 --> 0:22:36.040 two thousand and eleven and today, this being the end 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.880 of November two thousand twelve, when we record this, um 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:44.520 they got busy. So and this is Google's fault, seeing 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:47.840 every couple of years we're seeing a new version of Firefox, 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:50.640 a new a new version number like one to two, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:54.240 two to three, three to four. So you would expect 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:56.679 maybe the next you know, version five point oh of 0:22:56.760 --> 0:22:59.360 Firefox probably come out in two thousand and thirteen or so. 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.600 Not the case. The Firefox operating are of non operating 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:06.600 system of browser. We'll get to the operating system in 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:11.879 a second. Is currently at version seventeen as of the 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:14.119 recording of this podcast. So between two thousand and eleven 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:17.399 and November two twelve, we went from version four all 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:19.919 the way up to seventeen. And actually versions eighteen and 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:22.840 nineteen are both in alpha testing right now. That is correct, 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:26.480 and if you're interested, you can download those versions, even 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:30.720 a nightly built if you want. Your mileage may vary, yeah, 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:34.359 day by day, these browsers are changing, and some of 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:37.960 them may not be what we like to call stable, 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:42.879 but it just shows shows the massive amounts of change 0:23:42.920 --> 0:23:46.120 that have come out over the last year. Now, now 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:49.600 what influenced that? It was Google with the Chrome browser 0:23:50.160 --> 0:23:54.520 which came out and again, um, Google has a lot 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:58.200 of resources that it can uh that it can give 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:01.560 to the Google Chrome project, which itself is a derivative 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:07.240 of Chromium. Um. But Google Chrome came out and started 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:12.040 updating very very quickly, and the folks at the Mozilla 0:24:12.080 --> 0:24:15.960 Foundation realized that in terms of new features being added. 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:20.359 Chrome was out doing Mozilla quite rapidly, so they decided 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:22.600