Released on November 9, 2004, Firefox changed the way people view Web pages and helped developers create better Web sites. With Internet Explorer playing a significant role in helping script kiddies take Web based exploits to a new level via Microsoft's poorly implemented ActiveX controls, the World was ready for something much safer, less of a resource hog, and more compliant with Web development standards.

If you are viewing this Web site with an older version of Internet Explorer, namely version 6.x or less, at a minimum you should consider upgrading to version 7.x. For an overall better Web browsing experience consider Mozilla Firefox. 

Bigger is not always better 

Not until Firefox downloads had placed it at 14% (currently 20%) of the browser market share did Microsoft make an effort to upgrade Internet Explorer. Ironically when change did occur, most of the features already available within Firefox were implemented with Internet Explorer version 7; features such as tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, integrated download manager, and a search system that includes Google.

The developers of Firefox aimed to produce a browser that just surfs the Web and delivers the best possible browsing experience to the widest possible set of people. In fact, Firefox renders Web pages exactly as the Web developer wants them to look, thus an overall better viewing experience for the visitor. Internet Explorer on the other hand is developed to render Web pages based on standards established by Microsoft, most times as a confusing mess for the visitor. Needless to say it is a very frustrating cat & mouse game for Web developers who must spend extra hours programming their Web sites to appear correctly in the Microsoft browser, which unfortunately still holds the majority of the browser market share.

Another huge difference between the browsers is users can customize Firefox with extensions and themes. While users of Internet Explorer are confined to a few piecemeal 'widgets' that sometimes integrate properly, Mozilla maintains an add-on repository at addons.mozilla.org with nearly 2000 add-ons as of September 2007.

A difference in philosophies

Firefox uses a sandbox security model, and limits scripts from accessing data from other Web sites based on the same origin policy. It uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with Web servers using strong cryptography when using the https protocol. It also provides support for Web applications to use smartcards for authentication purposes.

The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.

Because Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.

An open-source community project versus a billion dollar a year corporate marketing strategy - the difference in philosophies is amazing.