Mozilla Firefox

However, according to a Microsoft SEC Filing on June 30, 2005, it acknowledged that browsers such as Mozilla are competitive threats to Internet Explorer: "Competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products."^[36]. Here is a list of alternate spellings for Wikipedia according to the language editions:. Vamos stated that he himself never used it personally.^[34] Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but he has commented that "so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?"^[35]. These include:. Despite Firefox's apparent gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft head of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, stated that he did not see Firefox as a threat and that there was not significant demand for the featureset of Firefox amongst Microsoft's users. All of them are multilingual, free-content wikis and administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. There is even interest in the Pocket PC community about having Firefox as an option for web browsing. Wikipedia has several sister projects that fulfill non-encyclopedic roles.

A number of applications are already using Portable Firefox Live to deliver a browser and HTML-based content from CD. Its founder has replied that it is not intended as one, though that is a consequence.^[26]. Haller has also started development work on Portable Firefox Live, which aims to run on CD-R or other read-only media. Former Wikipedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger has said that having the GFDL license as a "guarantee of freedom is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia."^[24] In a study of Wikipedia as a community, Economics professor Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation.^[25] Wikipedia has been viewed as a social experiment in anarchy or democracy. It also uses compression (courtesy of UPX and 7-Zip) to reduce the overall footprint and increase speed. Vandalism or the minor infraction of policies may result in a warning or temporary block, while long-term or permanent blocks for prolonged and serious infractions are given by Jimmy Wales or, on its English edition, an elected Arbitration Committee. It includes a specialized launcher that adjusts extensions and themes to work as they are moved from computer to computer. Many users have been temporarily or permanently blocked from editing Wikipedia.

Haller released the first packaged version and then led development from there. Administrators are the largest such group, privileged with the ability to prevent articles from being edited, delete articles, or block users from editing in accordance with community policy. John T. Maintenance tasks are performed by a group of volunteer developers, stewards, bureaucrats, and administrators, which number in the hundreds. It arose out of a mozillaZine thread in June of 2004. According to Wikimedia, one-quarter of Wikipedia's traffic comes from users without accounts, who are less likely to be editors.^[23]. Portable Firefox is a repackaged version of Firefox designed to run from a USB flash drive, iPod, external hard drive or any other portable media. During January 2005, Wikipedia had about 13,000 or more users who made at least five edits that month; 9,000 of these active users worked on its three largest language editions.^[22] A more active group of about 3,000 users made more than 100 edits per month, over half of these users having worked in the three largest editions.

And a start-up, Flock (formerly Round Two, MozSource and more formerly E-Flo), plans to build enhancements for Firefox.^[33] Firefox is also used by the 3B browser, which browses the web as a 3D city of web sites or a 3D store. Awards to the Wikipedia project and press clippings are listed by Wikimedia contributors on its website. The current version of Netscape, known as Netscape Browser or Netscape 8, combines the functionalities of Firefox and Internet Explorer. Wikipedia has received plaudits from sources including BBC News, Washington Post, The Economist, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Science, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times, The Times (London), Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, The Financial Times, Time Magazine, Irish Times, Reader's Digest and The Daily Telegraph. A number of commercialized versions of the Firefox browser have developed outside the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation. This award, normally given to individuals for great contributions to the Web in Japanese, was accepted by a long-standing contributor on behalf of the project. Google released two new Google Extensions for Firefox on December 14, 2005, further affirming the company's interest in Firefox. In September 2004, the Japanese Wikipedia was awarded a Web Creation Award from the Japan Advertisers Association.

Search engine companies including Google, Yahoo! and A9.com now also offer Firefox extensions for accessing their services, in addition to their original Internet-Explorer add-ons. Wikipedia was also nominated for a "Best Practices" Webby. also recommends Firefox as the browser for its Blogger.com weblog service.^[31] On May 18, 2005, eBay announced support for Firefox for its eBay Picture Manager.^[32]. The second was a Judges' Webby award for the "community" category. (Link prefetching involves a standards-compliant optimization technique that utilizes the browser's idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future.) Google, Inc. Wikipedia won two major awards in May 2004^[21]: The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities, awarded by Prix Ars Electronica; this came with a 10,000 euro grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in Austria later that year. Since March 30, 2005, the Google search engine has utilized the link prefetching feature of Firefox for faster searching. Wikipedia related communities, such as The Wikipedia Review, whose members tend to dislike Wikipedia, also exist.

Since the pre-1.0 stages, a number of well-known websites and web applications, including Gmail, have supported (and in some cases, required) the use of Firefox. Also see Asking questions and Getting in touch. ^[30]. That is, authors can be asked to defend or clarify their work, and disputes are readily seen.^[20] Wikipedia editions also often contain reference desks in which the community answers questions. In December 2005, it was announced that Dell UK were to start shipping the Firefox browser pre-installed on their PCs. In a page on researching with Wikipedia, its authors argue that Wikipedia is valuable for being a social community. The Networking Services and Information Technology department of the University of Chicago started to include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package for all incoming students on the third quarter of 2005.^[29]. Emigh and Herring argue that "a few active users, when acting in concert with established norms within an open editing system, can achieve ultimate control over the content produced within the system, literally erasing diversity, controversy, and inconsistency, and homogenizing contributors' voices." Editors on Wikinfo, a fork of Wikipedia, similarly argue that new or controversial editors to Wikipedia are often unjustly labeled "trolls" or "problem users" and blocked from editing.^[18] Its community has also been criticized for responding to complaints regarding an article's quality by advising the complainer to fix the article.^[19].

IBM encourages its employees to use Firefox as the company's standard web browser, with support from the company's help desk staff. The Wikipedia community consists of users who are proportionally few, but highly active. According to a CNET article published on May 12, 2005, about 30,000 of IBM's staff (about 10% of the total) already use Firefox. While limited to science-based articles, the study reveals the substantial effectiveness of the peer-reviewed system utilized by Wikipedia. Those companies remained reluctant to publicize the migration, due to in-house concerns that this might damage their relationship with Microsoft.^[28]. Of eight "serious errors" found — including misinterpretations of important concepts — four came from each source. During the FOSDEM 2005 conference, Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe, said that he knew "a few companies" that had deployed the Firefox browser or the Thunderbird mail client across a million seats. The average scientific entry in Wikipedia contained four errors or omissions, while Britannica had three.

From time to time, the SFX team or SFX members launch marketing events organized at the Spread Firefox website. However, in a study conducted by the journal Nature, making side-by-side comparisons of articles covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum contained in Wikipedia with those found in Encyclopædia Britannica, found that the accuracy of the two databases is essentially the same. The site lists the top 250 referrers. This led to the decision to restrict the ability to start articles to registered users. The portal enhanced the "Get Firefox" button program, giving users "referrer points" as an incentive. found that his biography had been vandalized. On September 14, 2004, a community-marketing portal dubbed "Spread Firefox" (SFX) debuted along with the Firefox Preview Release, creating a centralized space for the discussion of various marketing techniques. At the end of 2005, controversy erupted after journalist John Seigenthaler Sr.

For example, Blake Ross and Asa Dotzler organized a series of events dubbed "marketing week". The journal Nature reported in 2005 that science articles in Wikipedia are comparable in accuracy to those in Encyclopedia Britannica (Wikipedia has an average of four mistakes per article; Britannica contains three) ^[17] (Nature, 438, pp 900-901, 15 December 2005). The rapid adoption of Firefox apparently accelerated in part due to a series of aggressive community-marketing campaigns since 2004. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points ("B-"), Brockhaus Premium 3.3, and Microsoft Encarta 3.1.^[15] In an analysis of online encyclopedias, Indiana University professors Emigh and Herring wrote that "Wikipedia improves on traditional information sources, especially for the content areas in which it is strong, such as technology and current events."^[16]. It should be noted that a download count is not a user count, as a single download can be installed over many machines, or one person can download the software multiple times. The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Premium, Microsoft Encarta, and Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. The download counter is available as an RSS feed, so that the Firefox download can be added on websites to keep track of the number of downloads in near-realtime. Encarta Feedback allows any user to propose revisions for review by their staff.^[14].

These download counts did not include downloads using software updates and downloads from third-party websites. Microsoft Encarta has started to solicit comments from readers in attempt to improve the accuracy and timeliness of its encyclopedia. None of the Mozilla Foundation's previous product releases experienced that kind of growth. Its editors have also argued that, as a website, Wikipedia is able to include articles on a greater number of subjects than print encyclopedias may.^[13]. In other words, the download rate remained fairly stable. For example, the then-new article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on its English edition was cited often by the press shortly after the incident. Cumulative downloads increased in a near-linear fashion during the first quarter of 2005. It has been praised for, as a wiki, allowing articles to be updated or created in response to current events.

Europe, according to a study released by the firm XiTi on 2006-01-08, generally had higher percentages of Firefox use, with an average of 20%. These problems have had a negative impact on Wikipedia's desired image as a fast and reliable source of information. According to several sources (as listed in statistics reference), by November 2005, Firefox had around 9.4% of global market share, and 10% for North America. The English-language website also suffers from frequent timeouts, server errors and occasional downtime due to heavy user traffic. Web-surfers have adopted Firefox rapidly, despite the dominance of Internet Explorer in the browser market. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair."^[11] (Note that this is not true anymore as of December 2005.) Former Nupedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger stated in 2004, "when it comes to relatively specialized topics (outside of the interests of most of the contributors), the project's credibility is very uneven."^[12]. This is rarely a Firefox-specific problem, and is usually caused by the respective websites using code that does not adhere to W3C standards—such as code specific to Internet Explorer's quirks—or utilizing ActiveX controls or VBScript scripts, which are not supported in Firefox. Encyclopædia Britannica editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg has argued that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail.

Users switching from Internet Explorer sometimes find that certain websites do not render as expected in Firefox. Wikipedia has been accused of deficiencies in comprehensiveness because of its voluntary nature, and of reflecting the systemic biases of its contributors. ^[27] Another known frequent cause of memory leaks is misbehaving extensions, most notably Adblock. Referencing Linus' law of open-source development, Sanger stated earlier: "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow."^[8] Technology figure Joi Ito wrote on Wikipedia's authority, "[a]lthough it depends a bit on the field, the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the ability to comment) and has survived."^[9] Conversely, in an informal test of Wikipedia's ability to detect misinformation, its author remarked that its process "isn't really a fact-checking mechanism so much as a voting mechanism", and that material which did not appear "blatantly false" may be accepted as true.^[10]. This has been reported as memory leaks ^[26]; Mozilla developers claim it is sometimes at least partially an effect of blazing fast backwards and forwards (FastBack) feature. Wikipedia's editing process assumes that exposing an article to many users will result in accuracy. Another mentioned criticism is that a small percentage of users complain of Firefox using much more memory than other browsers. Former Nupedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger criticized Wikipedia in late 2004 for having, according to Sanger, an "anti-elitist" philosophy of active contempt for expertise.^[7].

IE also launches faster than Firefox on Windows as some of its components are loaded at Windows startup. Aaron Krowne wrote a rebuttal article in which he criticized McHenry's methods, and labeled them "FUD," the marketing technique of "fear, uncertainty, and doubt."^[6]. Other Gecko-based browsers such as K-Meleon, which use platform-native user interface implementations, generally run faster than Firefox. In this way a reader can know "who has used the facilities before him" and how long the community has had to process the information in an article to provide calibration on the "sense of security." However, these proposals for provenance are quite controversial (see Wikipedia talk:Provenance). The non-Windows-native XUL implementation of the user interface may be the cause of this perceived delay. The idea is to provide source provenance on each interval of text in an article and temporal provenance as to its vintage. Some note that Firefox takes longer to launch than other browsers such as Internet Explorer or Opera on Windows. In response to this criticism, proposals have been made to provide various forms of provenance for material in Wikipedia articles; see for example Wikipedia:Provenance.

This difference of opinion was one of the motivating factors behind the development of the Flock browser, which is a Firefox fork. In a 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia," former Britannica editor Robert McHenry criticized the wiki approach, writing,. However, not all users wish to install extensions for the features they want, preferring to see them included in the official software package. However, these links are offered as background sources for the reader, not as sources used by the writer, and the "enhanced perspectives" are not intended to serve as reference material themselves. (The developers state in response that they intend for Firefox to be a fairly minimal browser in order to reduce software bloat and bugs, while retaining a high degree of extensibility.) Most of these features, and many others, exist as installable Firefox extensions, or third-party software. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light" (Linden, 2002), and dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided such links since then. Many users observe that the developers have not implemented frequently requested features. Wikipedia articles have been referenced in "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in Science.

Firefox has at times attracted criticism for lacking features found in some other browsers. Academic circles have not been exclusively dismissive of Wikipedia as a reference. No publicly known attacks since its launch have been discovered. Discussing Wikipedia as an academic source, danah boyd said in 2005 that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes"^[4]. Another security source, SecurityFocus, reports no known vulnerabilities in Firefox 1.5.0.1, versus 65 unpatched vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 on Microsoft Windows XP SP2. That premise is completely unproven."^[3] On October 24, 2005, The Guardian published an article "Can you trust Wikipedia?" where a group of experts critically reviewed entries for their fields. As of February 2006, Secunia has reported 2 unpatched vulnerabilities in Firefox 1.x (with the most serious one marked "less critical"), versus 21 for Internet Explorer (with the most serious one marked "highly critical"). Similarly, Encyclopædia Britannica's executive editor, Ted Pappas, was quoted in The Guardian as saying: "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection.

While similar to other "responsible disclosure" policies operated by software vendors such as Microsoft, this policy falls short of the full disclosure principle favored by some security researchers. But with something like this, all that goes out the window"(Waldman, 2004). This approach aims to minimize the exploitation of publicly known vulnerabilities and to give the developers time to issue a patch. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. The Mozilla Foundation has implemented a policy on security bugs in order to help contributors to deal with security vulnerabilities.^[25] The policy restricts access to a security-related bug report to members of the security team until after Mozilla has shipped a fix for the problem. The main problem is the lack of authority. In addition, the Mozilla Foundation operates a "bug bounty" scheme: people who report a valid critical security bug receive a US$500 cash reward (for each report) and a Mozilla T-shirt.^[23] According to the Mozilla Foundation, this "bug bounty" system aims to "encourage more people to find and report security bugs in our products, so that we can make our products even more secure than they already are."^[24] Also, all users can have access to the source code of Mozilla Firefox, to the internal design documentation, to forum discussions, and to other materials that can help in finding bugs. In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, librarian Philip Bradley said that he would not use Wikipedia and is "not aware of a single librarian who would.

Once placed in the software, changes become visible for anyone else to consider, protest against, or improve.^[22]. Wikipedia contains no formal peer review process for fact-checking, and the editors themselves may not be well-versed in the topics they write about. At least one person besides the coder reviews proposed software changes, and typically yet another person carries out a "super-review". Some argue that allowing anyone to edit makes Wikipedia an unreliable work. Open source advocates argue that an important characteristic of Firefox security lies in the fact that anyone can see its source code and that it therefore must rely upon sound security mechanisms rather than security through obscurity. An entire website called Wikipedia Watch has been created to denounce Wikipedia as having "...a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information.". Some of Firefox's key security features include the use of the sandbox security model^[20], same origin policy and external protocol whitelisting ^[21]. It is considered to have no or limited utility as a reference work among many librarians, academics, and the editors of more formally written encyclopedias.

By default, Firefox downloads all files to a user's desktop on Windows and Mac OS X or to the user's home directory on GNU/Linux, but users can easily configure it to prompt for a specific download location. Wikipedia has been criticized for a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness, and authority. Users can configure the browser to either open downloaded files automatically or save them directly to the disk. Proponents contend that open editing improves quality over time while critics allege that non-expert editing undermines quality. Firefox also includes a customizable download manager. Wikipedia has been both praised and criticized for being open to editing by anyone. However, use of web feeds (RSS/Atom) has grown tremendously recently, making RSS-support an essential feature for a growing number of people. Wikipedia is criticised on the following issues:.

When this feature was first introduced in version 1.0 PR, some users worried that Firefox was beginning to include non-essential features, and succumb to bloat, much like the Mozilla Suite. Notable criticisms include that its open nature makes Wikipedia unauthoritative and unreliable, that Wikipedia exhibits systemic bias and that the group dynamics of its community are hindering its goals. Powered by RSS or Atom feeds, "Live Bookmarks", another feature of Firefox, allow users to dynamically monitor changes to their favorite news sources. Critics of Wikipedia include Wikipedia editors themselves, ex-editors, representatives of other encyclopedias, and even subjects of the articles. Firefox supports a number of extensions that assist in web development, including the powerful Venkman JavaScript debugger. Criticism of Wikipedia has increased with its prominence. While not installed by default, the tools become available via a "custom" install. Information related to evaluations of Wikipedia, including individual opinions, quality control, and awards are discussed below.

Firefox aficionados claim that no other browser includes the DOM Inspector, and that Firefox's JavaScript Console surpasses the consoles available in other browsers. This is seen in articles and discussion venues both within Wikipedia and elsewhere. Like the Mozilla Suite, Firefox comes with two web-development tools: a DOM Inspector and a JavaScript Console. Wikipedia's claimed status as an encyclopedia has been increasingly controversial as it has gained prominence. Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the string literals displayed to users, even users without a programming background can easily complete part of the internationalization and localization process, requiring only a simple text editor. Bomis, an on-line advertising company that hosts mostly adult-oriented web-rings, played a significant part in the early development of Wikipedia. Contributors throughout the world have collaborated in translating the Firefox browser into many frequently used languages/locales, including some of the least often supported locales, such as Chichewa, but excluding Latvian, Malay, Arabic, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi and Persian. [2].

However, it may occasionally cause problems, especially with extensions. It's 4th Quarter 2005 costs were $321,000 dollars with hardware making up almost 60% of the budget. This functionality is useful for users who dual-boot their machines. Wikipedia is funded through the Wikimedia Foundation . Therefore, a profile may be used on multiple platforms, so long as all of the platforms can access the profile (e.g., the profile is stored on a FAT32 partition accessible from both Windows and GNU/Linux). The ongoing status of Wikipedia's website is posted by users at a status page on OpenFacts. Firefox uses the same format to store users' profiles (which contain their personal browser settings) even on different operating systems. In spite of all this, Wikipedia page load times remain quite variable.

Builds for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition also exist. A new Dutch cluster is also online now. Operating systems not officially supported by the Mozilla developers, but known to run the browser include:. Wikimedia has begun building a global network of caching servers with the addition of three such servers in France. Since the Mozilla Foundation makes the Firefox source code available, users can also compile and run Firefox on a variety of other architectures and operating systems. To increase speed further, rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a filesystem until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Firefox does not officially support Windows 95, but reportedly functions properly after the application of a few tweaks.^[16]. The web servers serve pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the Wikipedias.

Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems^[15]:. Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to two load-balancing servers running the Perlbal software, which then pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page-rendering from the database. Mozilla Firefox runs on a wide variety of platforms. Page requests are processed by first passing to a front-end layer of Squid caching servers. Some of the Mozilla standards like XBL are also making their way to open standards (via WHATWG). By September 2005, its server cluster had grown to around 100 servers in four locations around the world. Also, work continues on implementing standards currently missing such as APNG and XForms and improving support for SVG. This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache software, and seven Squid cache servers.

Firefox has already implemented most of CSS Level 2 and some of the not-yet-completed CSS Level 3 standard. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers located in Florida. Mozilla contributors constantly improve Firefox's support for existing standards. Wikipedia was served from a single server until 2003, when the server setup was expanded into an n-tier distributed architecture. Firefox also supports PNG images and variable transparency as opposed to Internet Explorer, which will not support it fully until the not-yet-released version 7.^[14] Indeed, Internet Explorer's lack of support for PNG images has occasioned much debate, as many web developers want to move away from the old GIF format, which does not have the same capabilities and image quality as PNG. It was licensed under the GNU General Public License and used by all Wikimedia projects. Firefox has extensive support for most basic standards including HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, ECMAScript (JavaScript), DOM, MathML, DTD, XSL and XPath. Instituted in July 2002, this Phase III software was called MediaWiki.

The Mozilla Foundation takes pride in Firefox's compliance with existing standards, especially W3C web standards. Ultimately, the software was rewritten again, this time by Lee Daniel Crocker. Experimental features like HTTP pipelining often lurk hidden in the about:config menu. Several rounds of modifications were made to improve performance in response to increased demand. This mechanism enables features such as single-window mode and error pages, or speeding up page rendering by various tweaks. This software, Phase II, was written specifically for the Wikipedia project by Magnus Manske. Additionally, Firefox stores many hidden preferences that users can access by typing about:config in the address bar. Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database in January 2002.

A Firefox installation can keep all extensions and themes available on the Mozilla Update site up-to-date through Firefox's interface, which periodically checks for updates to installed themes and extensions. At first it required CamelCase for links; later it was also possible to use double brackets. Beyond adding a new theme, users can customize Firefox's interface by moving and manipulating its various buttons, fields, and menus, and likewise by adding and deleting entire toolbars. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki by Clifford Adams (Phase I). The Mozilla Update web site offers many themes for downloading. MediaWiki is Phase III of the program's software. Themes consist of packages of CSS and image files. Wikipedia is run by MediaWiki free software on a cluster of dedicated servers located in Florida and three other locations around the world.

Firefox also supports a variety of themes/skins, which change its appearance. Publication will begin in October 2006, and finish in 2010. Occasionally, an extension becomes part of the official product (for example tabbed browsing, a feature which proved popular through the MultiZilla extension, eventually became part of standard Mozilla). There are currently plans to license the usage of the Wikipedia trademark for some products like books or DVDs.^[25] The German Wikipedia will be printed in its entirety by Directmedia, in 100 volumes of 800 pages each. One can view the extension system as a ground for experimentation, where one can test new functionalities. Technically a servicemark, the scope of the mark is for: "Provision of information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet". Many features formerly part of the Mozilla Suite, such as the ChatZilla IRC client and a calendar, have become Firefox extensions. Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16, 2004 and in the European Union on January 20, 2005.

Wikipedia editors using Firefox v0.8-1.0.7 can even download a customised toolbar for Wikipedia editing. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Through extensions (installed via XPInstall modules), users may activate new features, such as mouse gestures, advertisement blocking, proxy server switching, and debugging tools. The Wikimedia Foundation applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark Wikipedia® on September 17, 2004. The design of Firefox aims at high extensibility. Wikipedia reached its one millionth article among 105 language editions on September 20, 2004,^[23] while the English edition alone reached its 500,000th on March 18, 2005^[24]. When a user enters a keyword into the address bar that is not recognized by Firefox (for example, simply typing "apple"), it automatically redirects the user to the first result yielded by a Google search for the word (or words). The English Wikipedia reached a 100,000 article milestone on January 22, 2003^[22].

Custom keywords are provided "out of the box" for Google Search, Google Stock Search, Dictionary.com, Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia. In its first two years, it grew at a few hundred or fewer new articles per day; by 2004, this had accelerated to 1,000 to 3,000 per day across all editions. For example, using a custom keyword, a user can type "google apple" into the address bar and be redirected to the results of a Google search for "apple". Wikipedia has traditionally measured its status by article count. This feature allows users to access their bookmarks from the location bar using keywords (and an optional query parameter). Wikimedia has since started a number of other projects, detailed below. Additionally, Firefox supports the "custom keyword" feature introduced by the Mozilla Suite. Wikipedia's first sister project, "In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki" had been created in October 2002 to detail the September 11, 2001 attacks; Wiktionary, a dictionary project, was launched in December 2002; Wikiquote, a collection of quotes, a week after Wikimedia launched; and Wikibooks, a collection of collaboratively-written free books, the next month.

Users may download more search plugins (including one for Wikipedia) from the Mycroft project or remove any unwanted ones. From Wikipedia and Nupedia, the Wikimedia Foundation was created on June 20, 2003.^[21] Wikipedia and its sister projects thereafter operated under this non-profit organization. By default, Firefox allows users to search Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Creative Commons, Dictionary.com, and eBay. Projects have since forked from Wikipedia's content for editorial reasons, such as Wikinfo, which abandoned "neutral point-of-view" in favor of multiple complementary articles written from a "sympathetic point-of-view.". Firefox also sports a built-in search toolbar with an extensible search engine listing. Later that year, Wales announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and moved its website to wikipedia.org. Also, if the user's exact query does not appear anywhere on the page, the "Find" box turns red. Citing fear of commercial advertising and lack of control in a perceived English-centric Wikipedia, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create the Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002.

As the user types more of the word, Firefox refines its search. It subsequently became inactive and its creator, free-software figure Richard Stallman, lent his support to Wikipedia.^[20]. With this feature enabled, a user can simply begin typing a word while viewing a web page, and Firefox automatically searches for it and highlights the first instance found. Under a similar concept of free content, though not wiki production, the GNUPedia project existed alongside Nupedia early in its history. First, Firefox has an incremental find feature known as "find as you type". Wales mentioned that he heard the concept first from Jeremy Rosenfeld, an employee of Bomis who showed him the same wiki, in December 2000,^[19] but it was after Sanger heard of its existence from Ben Kovitz, a regular at this wiki, in January 2001,^[17] and proposed a creation of a wiki for Nupedia to Wales that Wikipedia's history started. The browser has a number of features which help users find information. Wales and Sanger attribute the concept of using a wiki to Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb or Portland Pattern Repository.

Firefox 1.5 (Windows version) is also the first browser to meet US federal government requirements that software be easily accessible to users with physical impairments. It had 26 language editions by the end of 2002, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the end of 2004.^[18] Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers went down, permanently, in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. It also supports various forms of keyboard navigation such as tabbing navigation and caret navigation (and in some builds, spatial navigation). It grew to approximately 20,000 articles among 18 language editions by the end of its first year. Firefox also belongs in the group of browsers which were first to adopt customizable pop-up blocking. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and search engine indexing. This feature originated in the Mozilla Suite, which in turn had borrowed the feature from the popular MultiZilla extension for Mozilla. There were otherwise few rules initially.

Firefox supports tabbed browsing, which allows users to open multiple web pages in the same browser window. Its policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its initial months, though it is similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbias" policy. The design of Firefox's option panels leaves many of the infrequently used options found in the Mozilla Suite not visible in Firefox. It was relaunched off-site after Nupedia's Advisory Board of subject experts disapproved of its production model.^[17] Wikipedia thereafter operated as a standalone project without control from Nupedia. As a result, the interface appears less cluttered than that of many other internet suites. Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001, as a single English-language edition at wikipedia.com, and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.^[16] It had been, from 10 January, a feature of Nupedia.com in which the public could write articles that could be incorporated into Nupedia after review. Developers put in a large amount of work towards simplifying Firefox's user interface. So there's little downside, as far as I can see."^[15].

Those interested can add (as extensions and plugins) many features not packaged with Firefox. They're also a potentially great source for content. The developers of Firefox aim to produce a browser that "just works" for most casual users. It seems to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly, need very little maintenance, and in general are very low-risk. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and future releases of Camino will also include the Java Embedding plugin,^[13] which allow Mac OS X users to run Java applets with the latest 1.4 and 5.0 versions of Java (the default Java software shipped by Apple is not compatible with any browser, except its own Safari). We have occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. Likely goals for Firefox include:^[12]. (...) As to Nupedia's use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE "open" and simple format for developing content.

^[11]. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not. Mozilla is developing versions 2.0 and 3.0 simultaneously in order to ship front-end innovation in version 2.0 built on a more stable back-end, while completing major architectural changes for version 3.0. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Development for version 2.0 will occur on the 1.8 branch from which version 1.5 was released, with release coming off of the yet-to-be-created 1.8.1 branch, while development on version 3.0 occurs simultaneously on the Mozilla trunk. "No, this is not an indecent proposal. According to the roadmap, future Firefox development will include version 2.0 and version 3.0. Under the subject "Let's make a wiki", he wrote:.