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Firefox version history

aspect of history

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ5451859
Source-derived summary

Firefox was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Application Suite, first released as Firefox 1.0 on November 9, 2004. Starting with version 5.0, a rapid release cycle was put into effect, resulting in a new major version release every six weeks. This was gradually accelerated further in late 2019, so that new major releases occur on four-week cycles starting in 2020.

Early versions

The project that became Firefox today began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite called m/b (or mozilla/browser). Firefox retains the cross-platform nature of the original Mozilla browser, using the XUL user interface markup language. The use of XUL made it possible to extend the browser's capabilities through the use of extensions and themes. The development and installation processes of these add-ons raised security concerns, and with the release of Firefox 0.9, the Mozilla Foundation opened a Mozilla Update website containing "approved" themes and extensions. The use of XUL sets Firefox apart from other browsers, including other projects based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and most other browsers, which use interfaces native to their respective platforms (Galeon and Epiphany use GTK+, K-Meleon uses MFC, and Camino uses Cocoa). Many of these projects started before Firefox, and may have served as inspiration.

Hyatt, Ross, Hewitt and Chanial developed their browser to combat the perceived software bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed, internally referred to, and continued by the community as SeaMonkey), which integrated features such as IRC, mail, news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing into one internet suite.

Editorial summary

“Firefox version history” enters the record as aspect of history. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Firefox, version and history can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004, 2019, 2020—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Firefox, version and history.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Firefox version history” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Firefox, version and history provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5451859. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2019 and 2020.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

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  2. Expand the search: follow Firefox version history primary sources, Firefox version history archive and Firefox research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Firefox version history” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.