Happy 5th B'day, Firefox!

Photo at Firefox's website: 5 Years of Firefox Cake at the Firefox Developer day in Tokyo, Japan



Yesterday (Nov 9) was Firefox's 5th Birthday.

First let me introduce features of Firefox 3.5 (the fastest Firefox ever more than twice as fast as Firefox 3) developed by Mozilla.
All its updated features are explained on the company's website or we can take a quick glance at its new features on Youtube,



And Google Chrome, introduced in September 2008.



The rise of the modern browsers -Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome- has surpassed the world's most popular browser - IE over the last 5 years.
According to Hack.Mozilla.org, "It’s also worth noting that Gecko and Firefox are unique in this space. The highly modular nature of Gecko mixed with the fact that Firefox itself is written in HTML and XUL (another UI-focused markup language) means that it’s the only browser that’s hackable like the web is. Every other browser is built as a monolithic desktop application from the last millennium. This natural advantage not only means that Firefox has the widest array of add-ons and developers, but is also a source of inspiration for most of the rest of the market."

Firefox builds a browser for mobile devices:


Technology is heading for data, privacy and identity when there are more and more people interact with the Internet, share information and write their own web programming on an open browser like Firefox.
When I was in Tokyo last year, I took the class - the International Roles of Japanese business and we have a guest speaker from big companies for Japan every class day. The Docomo, Japan's premier provider of leading-edge mobile voice, data and multimedia services with 54 million customers in Japan, talks about its plan of emerging advanced features for the next generation of cell phones. Cell phones in the next 5 years can be used as a commuting pass, passport, credit cards, etc.

Firefox has done a good job over the last 5 years, made dramatic changes in the Internet sector. I believe it is gonna make another miracle in the next 5 years.

P.S. It's also note-worthy to take a look at Microsoft's article, Imagining what Comes Next.