Firefox: Now we are one

Firefox turned one-year-old on Wednesday, marking yet another milestone for the popular open-source web browser.

Since the debut of Firefox 1.0 last November, users have downloaded 106.4 million copies of the open source browser, according to the Mozilla Foundation, which co-ordinated the development of Firefox.

And within the span of a year, Firefox has grabbed 8.65 per cent of the market and put a dent into Internet Explorer's dominance, according to NetApplications' October results.

Chris Beard, head of marketing and product management for Mozilla Corp, said: "At the launch, we had a million downloads on the first day and have not seen any let up in demand."

In the past year, Firefox helped validate the concept of an open source browser and encourage its use through viral word-by-mouth marketing, he added. And as Firefox enters its second year, several changes are in store.

Earlier this month, the test version of Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 came out, featuring such elements as automatic updates and faster performance when hitting the "forward" and "back" buttons.

The final version of Firefox 1.5 may be ready as early as a few weeks from now, depending on the feedback received from the approximately 500,000 users, who are testing the browser, Beard said.

Firefox, meanwhile, plans to kick off next year with an aggressive product cycle, according to Beard.

He said: "In 2006, we plan to adopt a more aggressive product cycle. Firefox 2 will launch in the mid-point of next year and Firefox 3 will be out in the first quarter of 2007."

The ramped up product cycle will be driven, in part, by the acceleration Firefox has seen in web services.

Firefox also plans to begin the New Year with scheduled security and stability updates every six to eight weeks.

Beard added: "While we'll move to scheduled updates, we will, however, respond to critical issues as needed outside of the scheduled windows."

Dawn Kawamoto writes for CNET News.com