Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This
Speaker 1: episode originally published on December twelve, two thousand, twelve. Twelve,
Speaker 1: twelve twelve. So what did we cover? Well, it's the
Speaker 1: Firefox story. Yep, the web browser known as Firefox. Now great,
Speaker 1: this is not a beginning, middle, and end story because
Speaker 1: Firefox continued well after two thousand twelve. But I thought
Speaker 1: you might like to hear about the history of the browser,
Speaker 1: So let's listen to this classic episode. Yeah. So, you know,
Speaker 1: there's this guy Tim burns Lee works so its cern
Speaker 1: like I feel like I've heard his name. Dude came
Speaker 1: up with this neat way of displaying information using on
Speaker 1: network connections, which would eventually blossom into the beautiful flower
Speaker 1: we know as the World Wide Web. We probably don't
Speaker 1: call it that so frequently anymore. If you if you
Speaker 1: read like the stuff from the the early nineties Worldwide
Speaker 1: Web and Information super Highway, what that they seem to
Speaker 1: be required in every single news story. Yeah, well we've
Speaker 1: started a little loopy here, but yeah, it's it's clear,
Speaker 1: and we haven't we we haven't mentioned it in quite
Speaker 1: some time, but we have mentioned it on multiple occasions
Speaker 1: that the Internet is basically a medium of communication between computers.
Speaker 1: It's it's a network of networks. Uh. Your computer hooks
Speaker 1: up to the Internet, and you can send information in
Speaker 1: a number of different ways. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: our pass a now or or less used than others.
Speaker 1: I mean people like Gopher or using transmission protocols like
Speaker 1: Gopher and and waste. Um. You know, people just don't
Speaker 1: do that very much. Using that is less used than
Speaker 1: it used to be. UM has certainly used quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and still quite a few people are using fault transfer
Speaker 1: protocol sure, sure, Um the different instant messenger protocols. They
Speaker 1: none of these are the Worldwide Web. The world Wide
Speaker 1: Web basically puts a very public pretty face on it,
Speaker 1: in some cases less than pretty, especially if you don't
Speaker 1: like crawling graphics and and MIDI files. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the old you know, this is the the user
Speaker 1: friendly version of what the Internet has to offer. For
Speaker 1: a lot of people, they thought the Worldwide web and
Speaker 1: internet were synonymous. Not really the case, but we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about a particular browser and a company organization
Speaker 1: that that helped bring this browser about and how it
Speaker 1: kind of became a power player. Actually it was the
Speaker 1: power Player for a while, or an ancestor of it was,
Speaker 1: and then it faded to obscurity, rose from the ashes.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that. So we're talking about Firefox
Speaker 1: in general. But to to understand Firefox and the story
Speaker 1: behind Firefox, you actually have to go back quite a
Speaker 1: way as well, before there was ever any sort of
Speaker 1: Firefox web browser. So all the way back to nine
Speaker 1: two and in ninety two, we're talking the earliest days
Speaker 1: of the web at this point, and it seems kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. I mean, we're recording this in so that's
Speaker 1: you know, just twenty years. But um, a fellow by
Speaker 1: the name of Mark and Reeson. Uh, basically this was
Speaker 1: this was a college project. Yeah, he and Eric Bina
Speaker 1: or or Bina, I'm not sure how to say his
Speaker 1: last name. Yeah, they began to work on a browser
Speaker 1: for x Windows on Unix computers and this was something
Speaker 1: that they decided to start working on this after being
Speaker 1: shown the work that Tim burners Lee had been doing
Speaker 1: over at CERN and they said, wow, you know, we
Speaker 1: should start creating a browser that could access this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. And so they worked together and they created
Speaker 1: something they called Mosaic, which was one of the earliest
Speaker 1: web browsers. Yeah, and it really it. It sort of
Speaker 1: helped popularize the World Wide Web for a lot of people. Um,
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. One it was it was
Speaker 1: not it was reasonably nice to look at, it was
Speaker 1: easy to use, UM. But it was also free because
Speaker 1: it was well, again a college project, so it was
Speaker 1: one of those things that was just offered. Now you
Speaker 1: kind of had to know where to find it. UM.
Speaker 1: You kind of had to know. I have an idea
Speaker 1: what the world Wide Web was, and at that point,
Speaker 1: it was uh, sort of a hobbyist thing. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: I I used when I used bit net back in
Speaker 1: in the day's. Immediately proceeding that, I was using basically email, um,
Speaker 1: using chat. But I really had no idea what the
Speaker 1: web was. And I started doing some reading around around
Speaker 1: that time and said, no, this this looks kind of interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, I didn't have a web client for
Speaker 1: Miamiga at the time. UM. But I started using Max
Speaker 1: around that time and found out that there was a
Speaker 1: version of Mosaic available for which I actually purchased with
Speaker 1: a book that told you how to use the darned
Speaker 1: thing and it came on a floppy disk, and so
Speaker 1: I loaded Mosaic from from from that and got started
Speaker 1: on the web. Yeah, some interesting connections we should we
Speaker 1: should talk about. I mean, you're going to find out
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of connections to various web
Speaker 1: browsers out there just coming from Mosaic. One of the
Speaker 1: earliest and to me, really interesting ones is that in
Speaker 1: n company called Spyglass Incorporated licensed the Mosaic browser. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they began to develop its own code base based
Speaker 1: on Mosaic, and then they licensed that code base to
Speaker 1: Microsoft and that would become part of what would eventually
Speaker 1: be Internet Explorer. So Mosaic and Internet Explorers share some
Speaker 1: some code. You go, way, way, way, way way back, um,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, you know, that's to me, that's a
Speaker 1: very interesting thing, especially when you look later on down
Speaker 1: the timeline of the evolution of browsers out there on
Speaker 1: the market. Yeah. Yeah, Now, of course that that's less
Speaker 1: of a direct lineage than what uh and Reason and
Speaker 1: company would do when they decided to go ahead and
Speaker 1: make some money off of this thing, which is the
Speaker 1: founding of the company Netscape. Yeah. First it was called
Speaker 1: Mosaic Communications, but they renamed it before too long to
Speaker 1: Netscape Communications. Uh. They being Mark and Reason and Jim Clark. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was same year that spy Glass incorporated as licensing
Speaker 1: Mosaic itself. Uh. And they come up with the the
Speaker 1: browser Netscape, and this was a a pay for browser.
Speaker 1: You would buy the browser. I bought a copy off
Speaker 1: the shelf, shrink wrapped copy of Netscape too, and it
Speaker 1: became the commune Gator. It actually became quite popular. And
Speaker 1: there are gator, I'm sorry navigator. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of Do you want to go back? No? No,
Speaker 1: well okay, we'll just keep going then. All right, Hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, guys, sometimes we go back anyway. And that
Speaker 1: escape was that is very rare. Though. I remember I
Speaker 1: remember the uh, the little window and the and the
Speaker 1: right upper right part of the screen, which you know,
Speaker 1: if you've used the web for a while, you remember
Speaker 1: that the little thing that would tell you that it's
Speaker 1: actually working. Um, it wasn't the you know thing from
Speaker 1: left to right in the navigation bar. Yeah, the address bar,
Speaker 1: I guess. But yeah, back in Netscape navigator days, they
Speaker 1: had an old ship's wheel that was so nice. We
Speaker 1: call that the helm. Anyway, the the the browser became popular,
Speaker 1: it kind of well. It introduced and a concept called extensions,
Speaker 1: which most people are familiar with these days. Extensions extend
Speaker 1: the features of a browser by I'll let you and
Speaker 1: saw some new code, that is it some added functionality.
Speaker 1: This gave websites, uh, or people who were developing websites
Speaker 1: the ability to include stuff that wasn't natively supported by
Speaker 1: HTML because the browsers were able to interpret the new
Speaker 1: code and and render it properly on the screen so
Speaker 1: that you're getting the experience that the people wanted you
Speaker 1: to have, the people being the web developers and uh.
Speaker 1: Around that time, in the early nineties, Netscape was doing
Speaker 1: really well. In fact, it might have had a market
Speaker 1: share as high as eight percent of the browser market
Speaker 1: at that time, and that's pretty remarkable considering that it
Speaker 1: was a pay for browser. Yeah, at that point, Netscape
Speaker 1: was was writing very high in the market. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: of course, they were competing with online service providers like
Speaker 1: a O L and compy serve UM. But the web
Speaker 1: basically was was netscapes to lose and boy, yeah at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end we escape. Now, see when
Speaker 1: you're talking about the possibility of paying you for your
Speaker 1: web browser versus a competitor that comes along and offers
Speaker 1: one for free, UM, that's freely downloadable and has the
Speaker 1: muscle of somebody really big behind it, like I don't know, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: like Steve Balmer, it's a big guy. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft
Speaker 1: launches Windows and it has the web browser that's included
Speaker 1: with Windows is Internet Explorer. Now. Remember Internet Explorer was
Speaker 1: built partially upon that code base from Mosaic, and it was,
Speaker 1: as Chris was saying, free of charge. You could download
Speaker 1: it freely and use it yourself, so you didn't have
Speaker 1: to buy a copy of a browser. And it even
Speaker 1: came with Windows, so you didn't even have to bother
Speaker 1: with it, right if you If you bought a new computer,
Speaker 1: then you had Internet Explorer built right in there. In fact,
Speaker 1: that ended up causing some problems. Uh, there were some
Speaker 1: issues about Internet Explorer being tied so tightly into the
Speaker 1: UM the operating system experience on Windows that it brought
Speaker 1: up some antitrust issues for Microsoft down line. But that's
Speaker 1: really more of a Internet Explorer story, not so much
Speaker 1: of Firefox story. So right, let's go back over to
Speaker 1: what's going on. It took some time, but Internet Explorer,
Speaker 1: even though it was free, I mean, it did not
Speaker 1: immediately take over like it wasn't. It wasn't an overnight
Speaker 1: now turnaround. It took about four generations of Internet Explorer
Speaker 1: for it to catch up to Netscape. Meanwhile, Netscape branched out.
Speaker 1: They did more than just used Netscape Navigator. They also
Speaker 1: wanted to create an entire suite of tools that you
Speaker 1: would use for email and for um using that in
Speaker 1: some of the other stuff. And they built a larger
Speaker 1: suite so you you had an option. You could go
Speaker 1: with Netscape Navigator if you just wanted to use the web,
Speaker 1: or a suite that they called Escape Communicator, which had
Speaker 1: the greater functionality. Unfortunately, in doing this, they gradually and
Speaker 1: this is common, uh, you know, it's happened into Microsoft
Speaker 1: and many many others. Uh, the code gradually became more bloated,
Speaker 1: more resource intensive, if you will, um, and made load
Speaker 1: time slower, made things more difficult. So now you have
Speaker 1: a you know, a heavyweight Internet heavyweight and Netscape going
Speaker 1: against uh, the the net newbie Microsoft. But Microsoft has
Speaker 1: the leaner, more integrated browser in this case and again free.
Speaker 1: So yeah, by that fourth generation of Internet Explorer, we
Speaker 1: started to see things switch around to the point where
Speaker 1: it was it was clear that Internet Explorer was going
Speaker 1: to run away with it. So in n uh Netscape
Speaker 1: Communications made a big decision, and yes, they decided that
Speaker 1: they would offer Netscape, the Netscape browser for free. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that they would freely offer up the the the
Speaker 1: source code so that it would become an open source project.
Speaker 1: So this, in other words, you could be a developer
Speaker 1: and go in and you could tweak Netscape and have
Speaker 1: your own version of Netscape and under the right you know,
Speaker 1: you had to follow certain rules, but you could do that.
Speaker 1: The community very quickly became huge and there was a
Speaker 1: new name for this project. It was called the Mozilla project. Yes,
Speaker 1: now I understand that the the name for Mozilla came
Speaker 1: from it's sort of a fudged portmanteau, which is a
Speaker 1: combination of words for mosaic killer or mosaic killer. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course that took on the form of dinosaur because
Speaker 1: it makes people. The name Mozilla makes people think of
Speaker 1: god Zilla. Um, so they of course didn't want to
Speaker 1: I'm sure copyright infringement. So Mozilla's dinosaur monster, lizard giant
Speaker 1: thing is that red instead of green and really bears
Speaker 1: no resemblance to uh, to Godzilla, although the it's more
Speaker 1: like a toyrnosaurus or maybe of a lesser raptor. Yes,
Speaker 1: now there and there have also been multiple incarnations of
Speaker 1: the design for the critter. But yeah, so it looks
Speaker 1: nothing like a Firefox into that right, the most little
Speaker 1: project launches, but it would not be until two thousand
Speaker 1: two before they released Mozilla one point oh. And this
Speaker 1: was a browser that included email client functionality among other features.
Speaker 1: But at that point Internet Explorer was dominant in the market.
Speaker 1: It had a market share. So we're talking about a
Speaker 1: time where you know, we went from ninety four or
Speaker 1: so where uh that Escape had about eight percent market
Speaker 1: share right to two thousand two where I e now
Speaker 1: has of the market share. So this is a good
Speaker 1: thing to point out. Things change, really, Yeah, market share
Speaker 1: can change dramatically from one from one decade to the next,
Speaker 1: or even in just the span of a few years.
Speaker 1: The reason why that's important to remember is that we
Speaker 1: always talk about market share as if it's the most
Speaker 1: important thing in the world in some cases, like you know,
Speaker 1: talk about and smartphone adoption or whatever. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: true that these things can change dramatically, and someone who's
Speaker 1: on top and you would think, oh, this guy is
Speaker 1: going to dominate the market forever, could very easily become
Speaker 1: and also ran in just a few years. Chris and
Speaker 1: I will have more to say about Firefox in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but first, let's take a quick break. People
Speaker 1: talk about the villain the blank here killer, and you know,
Speaker 1: those long term listeners will remember that I brought this
Speaker 1: up before. It drives me crazy when people talk about
Speaker 1: the fill in the blank killer because in just a
Speaker 1: few years, they'll be talking about whatever that was killer.
Speaker 1: And and in some cases they don't kill so much
Speaker 1: as carve out a niche market and uh and go
Speaker 1: for it. I mean, um, you know, in this case, uh,
Speaker 1: Internet Explorer would have been the Netscape killer, and in
Speaker 1: some cases they did. Um, but Mozilla would come back
Speaker 1: and carve out its own space. And then Chrome came
Speaker 1: along years later, and it is you know, that's it's
Speaker 1: sort of what's going on right now? At the time,
Speaker 1: Save as it Ever was you Save as it Ever was, so, uh, well,
Speaker 1: go ahead, And I was just gonna say, some community
Speaker 1: members of Mozilla, what's interesting is you've got the Mozilla project,
Speaker 1: You've got the Mozilla Browser. You still have people in
Speaker 1: the community who don't necessarily think that the way that
Speaker 1: the Mozilla browsers developing is the right way to go.
Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of having an open source community
Speaker 1: is that you don't you know, there's not necessarily just
Speaker 1: one path that you can take. You can have multiple
Speaker 1: paths to try and create the best browser experience possible.
Speaker 1: Some of those community members decided that there was there
Speaker 1: were some issues they had with Mozilla. One of them
Speaker 1: was that they felt that it was suffering from feature creep,
Speaker 1: which is the same thing we were talking about with Creep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he turns into like Dracula and then Mummy and then
Speaker 1: the creature for the Black Lagoon. And I've been watching
Speaker 1: too much Supernatural relately watched in an episode last night
Speaker 1: that was about that. Anyway, No, the idea that that
Speaker 1: they were again Mozilla was starting to become in their
Speaker 1: mind bloated the way Netscape head and they did not
Speaker 1: really think that that was something they should pursue. They
Speaker 1: thought that perhaps they should take the code and make
Speaker 1: something else out of it. So this group created a
Speaker 1: browser that they called Phoenix, as in rising from the ashes.
Speaker 1: Now they were a legendary that Yeah, yes, the one
Speaker 1: that was featured heavily in the documentary series Harry Potter.
Speaker 1: Um the uh the but it is it fitting? It
Speaker 1: is a fitting image for this browser, which at one
Speaker 1: time had been Netscape. So Phoenix rises from the ashes,
Speaker 1: but also tends to fall again because it turns out
Speaker 1: someone else has the name Phoenix, so they can't really
Speaker 1: use it. So they renamed it Firebird. That caused a
Speaker 1: problem because there was another organization that used the word
Speaker 1: firebird about distributed software, so that was an issue. They
Speaker 1: ended up thinking, okay, okay, okay, we'll name it something else.
Speaker 1: We'll call it a firefox. Yeah. No, firefox has the
Speaker 1: benefit here of going with the fire part at the beginning. Um,
Speaker 1: but adds another very cool animal image in there. Now,
Speaker 1: a firefox isn't actually a fox. It is, in fact
Speaker 1: a red panda, which, in my opinion or really neat animals.
Speaker 1: But you know, um and actually recently, UM, the Mozilla
Speaker 1: Foundation has sponsored uh the well being of a couple
Speaker 1: of red pandas in the Knoxville, Tennessee Zoo. Uh. They
Speaker 1: even had a webcam up which had the little critters
Speaker 1: running around and playing and sleeping and sleeping which they
Speaker 1: always seemed to be doing right as it tuned in.
Speaker 1: Oh look there's and settling down for a nap um
Speaker 1: In two thousand three was when Mozilla created the Mozilla Foundation,
Speaker 1: which is an independent, nonprofit organization. It's mainly meant to
Speaker 1: manage the daily operations of the Mozilla project. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and we didn't really touch on this, but the remnants
Speaker 1: of Netscape were purchased by America Online, so a O
Speaker 1: L bought Netscape. But the Mozilla Foundation has the ability
Speaker 1: to to go off and do their own thing here,
Speaker 1: so they have. Yeah. Yeah. So two thousand four was
Speaker 1: when Firefox one point oh was released, and uh, it
Speaker 1: became a very popular browser very quickly. In less than
Speaker 1: a year, they had over one hundred million downloads. So
Speaker 1: Firefox was quickly kind of viewed as the the alternative
Speaker 1: to Internet Explorer. I can hear all the opera fans
Speaker 1: out there screaming at me. But you know that's the
Speaker 1: popular The popular view was that Firefox. If you didn't
Speaker 1: want to use Internet Explore, you should use Firefox. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I had actually been using Opera up until that point,
Speaker 1: um as. I specifically remember a friend of mine going, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I know you like Opera, but you really
Speaker 1: should try this Firefox out. And I was kind of
Speaker 1: skeptical because I was one of the people who was
Speaker 1: cranky at Netscape for getting so darn bloated. I tried
Speaker 1: Netscape Communicator for a long time and it just drove
Speaker 1: me crazy. And I didn't like Internet Explorer for the
Speaker 1: Mac very much. So yeah, once, once I tried it,
Speaker 1: I got hooked. Give you guys some reference two thousand four.
Speaker 1: That's around the same time that companies like my Space
Speaker 1: and Facebook are starting to to make a name for themselves.
Speaker 1: Of course, at that point, Facebook is strictly a college
Speaker 1: only experience, but yeah, that's that gives you an idea
Speaker 1: of what's going on around that time. It would be
Speaker 1: two years before version two point oh of Firefox came
Speaker 1: out that they would update. They made lots of frequent
Speaker 1: updates to the Firefox browser, but they were all very
Speaker 1: incremental without major changes to the code. Point releases, you
Speaker 1: can't say. So it wasn't until you know, it's two
Speaker 1: years after a debut before two point I came out,
Speaker 1: and it was another two years when version three point
Speaker 1: oh came out. So it was two thousand eight. Uh.
Speaker 1: The reason why I'm bringing this up is it will
Speaker 1: be interesting when we get to talk about what version
Speaker 1: is currently how in the wild right now as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast. But but yeah, two thousand
Speaker 1: eight was when version three point I was released and
Speaker 1: Firefox hit of the market share. Now, UM, I'd like
Speaker 1: to bring this up because the Mozilla Foundation does a
Speaker 1: lot more than just uh than us in Firefox and
Speaker 1: pandas red pandas they're so cute um uh. They also
Speaker 1: had split off some of the other code that was
Speaker 1: part of Communicator. For example, Thunderbird, which is their email client.
Speaker 1: UM is UH is sort of the the version that
Speaker 1: that used to be the mail client. And there there
Speaker 1: was a unified UM basically the derivative of Communicator itself,
Speaker 1: the suite, which was called Sea Monkey UM and UH.
Speaker 1: They released um early versions of that. Thunderbird one point
Speaker 1: oh came out on December seven, two thousand four and
Speaker 1: um uh, Sea Monkey one point oh came out on
Speaker 1: January two thousand and six. Now, both of these are
Speaker 1: probably not as in as much in the public eye,
Speaker 1: Thunderbird more so, but Sea Monkey certainly not as much
Speaker 1: as as either one of those two. Um, but they
Speaker 1: still do work on those projects and over time. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make sure that we mentioned them. But overtime,
Speaker 1: Mozilla has brought Thunderbird up to the same basically the
Speaker 1: same version system that firefoxes on. We have a little
Speaker 1: bit more to say about Firefox, but before we get there,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, we have Firefox version fourth point oh released.
Speaker 1: I remember that was a big deal. It was the
Speaker 1: one that that came out. And then, um so between
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven and today, this being the end
Speaker 1: of November two thousand twelve, when we record this, um
Speaker 1: they got busy. So and this is Google's fault, seeing
Speaker 1: every couple of years we're seeing a new version of Firefox,
Speaker 1: a new a new version number like one to two,
Speaker 1: two to three, three to four. So you would expect
Speaker 1: maybe the next you know, version five point oh of
Speaker 1: Firefox probably come out in two thousand and thirteen or so.
Speaker 1: Not the case. The Firefox operating are of non operating
Speaker 1: system of browser. We'll get to the operating system in
Speaker 1: a second. Is currently at version seventeen as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast. So between two thousand and eleven
Speaker 1: and November two twelve, we went from version four all
Speaker 1: the way up to seventeen. And actually versions eighteen and
Speaker 1: nineteen are both in alpha testing right now. That is correct,
Speaker 1: and if you're interested, you can download those versions, even
Speaker 1: a nightly built if you want. Your mileage may vary, yeah,
Speaker 1: day by day, these browsers are changing, and some of
Speaker 1: them may not be what we like to call stable,
Speaker 1: but it just shows shows the massive amounts of change
Speaker 1: that have come out over the last year. Now, now
Speaker 1: what influenced that? It was Google with the Chrome browser
Speaker 1: which came out and again, um, Google has a lot
Speaker 1: of resources that it can uh that it can give
Speaker 1: to the Google Chrome project, which itself is a derivative
Speaker 1: of Chromium. Um. But Google Chrome came out and started
Speaker 1: updating very very quickly, and the folks at the Mozilla
Speaker 1: Foundation realized that in terms of new features being added.
Speaker 1: Chrome was out doing Mozilla quite rapidly, so they decided
Speaker 1: to put themselves on a on a rapid release cycle,
Speaker 1: to which frustrated a lot of people because Firefox, more
Speaker 1: so than Chrome, has been the standard by which companies operate,
Speaker 1: uh Internet Explorer or Firefox, um, you know, not Safari,
Speaker 1: not not Opera, not not Chrome. And um, so they've
Speaker 1: they've been on not as not on a scale that's
Speaker 1: not as fast as Chrome, but they did update, uh
Speaker 1: start making updates more quickly and uh much more quickly
Speaker 1: than they used to be. And now they're on a
Speaker 1: sort of a cycle where they're releasing a couple maybe
Speaker 1: three updates a year. It's ut I think, yeah, to
Speaker 1: go from four to seventeen, have thirteen major releases um
Speaker 1: within the span of like a year and a half.
Speaker 1: Really the releases seemed to be on a tight on
Speaker 1: on a more level scheduled now than they had been.
Speaker 1: They're playing catch up for quite some time. In October five,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, they released the Firefox build that that
Speaker 1: can be used in the Windows eight user interface. That's
Speaker 1: that tiled interface that was formerly called Metro UM. So
Speaker 1: that that came out towards the end of two thousand twelve. Also,
Speaker 1: they they're working on a smartphone i'll bringing system. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's kind of an interesting thing that to build a
Speaker 1: an OS for phones to really get into that market.
Speaker 1: I mean, where are you talking about? A market that's
Speaker 1: mainly being fought by Google and Apple, with Windows trying
Speaker 1: to make uh name for itself as well at that
Speaker 1: same time, and then other players like BlackBerry are trying
Speaker 1: to you know, regroup, and some like Symbian are almost gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah now, And and it's interesting too because uh,
Speaker 1: like what Google is doing with its operating system, the
Speaker 1: chromos UM Firefox OS is also leaning heavily on Web
Speaker 1: standards for its for its programming. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: HTML five, the the newly proposed but not yet finalized
Speaker 1: version of the Hypertext markup language, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the Mozilla specific API s Application programming interfaces UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: these are are plug in play pieces of code that
Speaker 1: people can use to make them compatible intercompatible. UM. Mozilla
Speaker 1: is basically saying, hey, look, we're open source, we're free,
Speaker 1: and you know, we want to see if we can
Speaker 1: make inroads on people's smartphones and and people can use
Speaker 1: an fire Box OS simulator right now where you can
Speaker 1: actually give it a try. Actually. Uh, the name for
Speaker 1: the simulator is R two D two B two G
Speaker 1: B two G. By the way, it means boot to
Speaker 1: ge Go, yes, which was the original name, Gecko being
Speaker 1: the web interface that that web engine that Firefox is
Speaker 1: built on. But yeah, they they are a primarily web
Speaker 1: centric operating Where does R two D two come from?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no idea, Probably just something
Speaker 1: they made up. It's weird because I would think those
Speaker 1: were not the droids I was looking for. Entirely possible anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that brings us up to date with what's
Speaker 1: going off with Firefox. Uh, it's a it's you know,
Speaker 1: I've used Firefox quite a bit in the past. Um,
Speaker 1: and it was for a very long time. It was
Speaker 1: my browser of choice. It's still my browser of choice
Speaker 1: minus Chrome. And that wraps up this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff about Firefox. Hope you guys enjoyed. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for a future episode of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you can send me an email the addresses tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter the handle of
Speaker 1: both is tech Stuff h s W. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys will go and pop on over to our website
Speaker 1: that's tech stuff podcast dot com, because there you're going
Speaker 1: to find a full archive of all of our episodes.
Speaker 1: You also find links to the online store where you
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Speaker 1: mug or T shirt. That would be awesome, right, you'd
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Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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