CHANCES are you don't think much about Web browsers because you get one with Microsoft Windows. And that's just how Microsoft likes it. The company dominates the Web browser business just the way it dominates the rest of the desktop.
But there have always been challengers to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, including Netscape Navigator, Opera and a series of Web applications from an organization of volunteer programmers called the Mozilla Project.
For inveterate Microsoft haters and those who merely want a pleasant and relatively secure Web experience, the official release of Mozilla's Firefox browser last week was great news.
Firefox is a lean, fast Web browser that won't make current IE users feel like strangers but isn't bloated with extras or subject to the gaping security holes that have bedeviled Microsoft's Web browser, allowing legions of hackers, crooks and lowlife advertisers to gum up the world's computers with spyware, adware and other junkware.
It's a large-scale example of so-called "open source" programming - software developed by teams of volunteers who post their source code online for anyone to use, hack at or improve. In fact, the Mozilla Project organized in 1998 to provide a free alternative to Internet Explorer. It began with the source code to Netscape, the first widely used Web browser, which fell victim to Microsoft's assault on the Web market and is now owned by Time Warner.
Over the years, Mozilla developers have worked on making the browser faster, safer and more efficient, while Netscape, under AOL's tutelage, has turned into a monster that rivals IE for sheer bloat.
The latest release of Firefox is numbered 1.0, which normally refers to the first, fully debugged, public version of a program. Given the frenzied urge of most publishers to get new software out the door, the designation of Version 1.0 typically means "Use at your own risk." But more than 8 million people have downloaded "beta," or pre-release, versions of Firefox, so its programmers have had plenty of opportunity to identify and squash its bugs.
Installing Firefox was a pleasure. The file was a mere 4.8 megabyte download from Mozilla's Web site, and Firefox went through its setup routine without a hiccup. It automatically imported my favorites and other Web browser settings from Internet Explorer (including cookies and stored passwords), so I didn't have to go through the process of logging onto sites I regularly visit.
