Firefox turns five

Happy birthday candles

The Firefox browser, developed by Mozilla, is today celebrating its fifth birthday, previewing what it is planning for the future.

The first version of the open source browser was released back on 9 November 2004 and is now currently running at version 3.5 with 3.6 due before Christmas.

Firefox has been increasing in popularity over the years and currently holds a market share of 24 per cent, equating to more than 330 million users.

It is still lagging behind Microsoft's dominating Internet Explorer browser but is holding off closer competition such as Google's Chrome or Safari.

The company has announced celebrations under the title of "Light the World" with the tag line: "Five years of Firefox That's a long time on the internet, so let's celebrate five years of working together to make the web better for everyone."

Mozilla also offered a sneak preview of its next project, making Firefox into a mobile browser.

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.