Still Not Perfect

Mozilla has launched the version 1.0 of their popular Firefox web browser. This release seems even faster and even more stable. Besides, Firefox is not vulnerable to all of the the exploits that plague Internet Explorer. This means browser hijack attacks and unwanted popups are a thing of the past (if you are a Firefox user [hint hint]).

The migration of users from IE to Firefox continues for the 5th straight month. How much longer until IE fires a volley back? In the meantime Mozilla seems to understand what users want much better than Microsoft.

Get your copy here, but prepare to be patient - their servers are getting hammered. Or, get the torrent.

(Update) Mirrors:
http://64.12.168.21/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0/
http://207.200.85.49/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0/
http://trillian.cc.gatech.edu/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
http://mozilla.osuosl.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0/
http://mozilla.ussg.indiana.edu/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

Firefox 1.0 RC1 was released today. It is not yet on the Mozilla homepage, but you can download it from their FTP site. It includes about 250 bug fixes. Keep in mind that this is just a testing release, so if you aren’t interested in helping test and reporting bugs I suggest you hold off for a few more weeks until the product is officially released (November 9?).

Word on the street is that it starts up faster than Firefox 1.0 PR and renders pages about 2x faster. I can confirm that it does seem to start up faster, but downloading pages seems to actually be slower - pages still render fast once you’ve downloaded them though. Also, most of my plugins seem to be broken for RC1, so if you depend on having your plugins working you might want to steer clear of this release. Afterall, it is for testing before the final release.

All in all I am still very impressed with Firefox. Thanks to all of the people at Mozilla for their hard work. And it looks like their hard work is paying off - they are gaining market share.