The beginnings of Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox came into existence during the browser wars that started in 1997, following the introduction of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. As a result, in 1998, Netscape Navigator’s source code was published as ‘open source’, and after that, the Mozilla project took off.

Netscape’s software was rewritten completely, and the first success was the launch of the ME public development version, at the start of 1999.  A few years later, in June 2002, version 1.0 of the Mozilla browser was launched.  It was a combined browser/e-mail package like most browsers at the time.  This led to the start of an experimental project aimed at separating the browser from the other applications, a project was called Mozilla/Browser.
It was ready in September 2002, and the first public version (0.1) was launched under the name Phoenix. Because of the number of brand name conflicts, first with BIOS and then with an ‘open source’ database called Firebird, the browser was renamed, starting with version 0.8.  This occurred in February 2004, and the new name became Mozilla Firefox. From that point onwards, Mozilla Firefox quickly became known as a fast, secure and user-friendly product.

The success of Firefox
The reasons for the success of Mozilla Firefox include ease of use, functions for secure and fast surfing of the Internet (integrated blocking of popup windows), and navigation with tabs. These functions were not all available together in the one browser at the time. They had been used by a number of browsers, but Mozilla Firefox was the first browser to implement them all.