Firefox in the context of FreeBSD

Grammarly is an American English language writing assistant software tool. It reviews the spelling, grammar, and tone of a piece of writing as well as identifying possible instances of plagiarism. It can also suggest style and tonal recommendations to users and produce writing from prompts with its generative AI capabilities.

Grammarly was developed in Ukraine and launched in 2009 by Alex Shevchenko [uk], Max Lytvyn [uk], and Dmytro Lider. It is available as a standalone application; a browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox; and as an add-on for Google Docs.

Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and also for Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of ChromeOS, on which it serves as the platform for web applications.

Most of Chrome's source code comes from Google's free and open-source software project known as Chromium, but Chrome is licensed as proprietary freeware. WebKit was the original rendering engine, but Google eventually forked it to create the Blink engine; all Chrome variants except iOS used Blink as of 2017.

A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers can also display content stored locally on the user's device.

Browsers are used on a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, smartwatches, smart televisions and consoles. As of 2024, the most used browsers worldwide are Google Chrome (~66% market share), Safari (~16%), Edge (~6%), Firefox (~3%), Samsung Internet (~2%), and Opera (~2%). As of 2023, an estimated 5.4 billion people had used a browser.

Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that gives users the right to use, share, modify, and distribute the software – modified or not – to everyone and provides the means to exercise those rights using the software's source code. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free software and open-source software. The rights guaranteed by FOSS originate from the "Four Essential Freedoms" of The Free Software Definition and the criteria of The Open Source Definition. All FOSS can have publicly available source code, but not all source-available software is FOSS. FOSS is the opposite of proprietary software, which is licensed restrictively or has undisclosed source code.

The historical precursor to FOSS was the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses have been adopted by many software packages. Reasons for using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware, stability, privacy, opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware.

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source personal information manager primarily used as an e-mail client with a calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix), and news client. Operated by MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, Thunderbird is an independent, community-driven project that is managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird community. As a cross-platform application, Thunderbird is available for Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, Android, and Linux. The project strategy was originally modeled after that of Mozilla's Firefox, and Thunderbird is an interface built on top of that Web browser.

Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes, and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

Mozilla's current products include the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client (now through a subsidiary), the Bugzilla bug tracking system, and the Gecko layout engine.

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software.

Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2024 estimate of the value of open-source software to firms is $8.8 trillion, as firms would need to spend 3.5 times the amount they currently do without the use of open source software.

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, some of whom are employed by the corporation itself. The corporation also distributes and promotes these products. Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla open source project, founded by the now defunct Netscape Communications Corporation, the Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit entity. The Mozilla Corporation reinvests all of its profits back into the Mozilla projects. The Mozilla Corporation's stated aim is to work towards the Mozilla Foundation's public benefit to "promote choice and innovation on the Internet."

A MozillaZine article explained:

Gecko is a browser engine developed by Mozilla. It is used in the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, and in a discontinued state on AOL's Netscape 6, Netscape 7, Netscape Browser and Netscape Navigator 9; this is alongside many other projects.

Gecko is designed to support open Internet standards, and is used by different applications to display web pages and, in some cases, an application's user interface itself (by rendering XUL). Gecko offers a rich programming API that makes it suitable for a wide variety of roles in Internet-enabled applications, such as web browsers, content presentation, and client/server.

ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system for i586/amd64 personal computers that is intended to be binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers developed for Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Microsoft Windows. ReactOS has been noted as a potential open-source drop-in replacement for Windows and has been of interest for its information on undocumented Windows APIs.

ReactOS has been in development since 1996. As of October 2025, it is still considered to be feature-incomplete alpha software. Therefore, it is recommended by the developers to be used only for evaluation and testing purposes. However, many Windows applications are working, such as Adobe Reader 9.3, GIMP 2.6, and LibreOffice 5.4.

Firefox for Android is a web browser developed by Mozilla for Android smartphones and tablet computers. As with its desktop version, it uses the Gecko layout engine, and supports features such as synchronization with Firefox Sync, and add-ons.

The initial version of Firefox for Android was codenamed Fennec and branded Firefox for mobile; it initially supported Maemo and Android before supporting MeeGo and Firefox OS as well. Support for Maemo was later dropped. In 2020, a redesigned version of Firefox for Android (codenamed Fenix, and also branded as Firefox Daylight) was released, which introduced a new internal architecture and user interface inspired by Firefox Focus, new privacy features, and switching to curated WebExtensions for add-ons.

Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than one percent in 2006. An early Netscape employee, Brendan Eich, created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. A founding engineer of Netscape, Lou Montulli, created HTTP cookies. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications and was later renamed to TLS.

Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion. In February 1998, approximately one year before its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product. The Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine, and all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. When AOL scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization in the early 2000s, the Organization proceeded to establish the Mozilla Foundation in July 2003 to ensure its continued independence with financial and other assistance from AOL. The Gecko engine is used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a discontinued web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems. Released on August 24, 2001, it is the sixth version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 5. It does not support Windows 95.

Despite dominating market share (attaining a peak of 90% in mid-2004), this version of Internet Explorer has been widely criticized for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in "worst tech products of all time" lists, with PC World labeling it "the least secure software on the planet". In 2004, Mozilla finalized Firefox to rival IE6, and it became highly popular and acclaimed for its security, add-ons, speed and other modern features such as tabbed browsing. Microsoft planned to fix these issues in Internet Explorer 7 by June–August 2005, but it was delayed until an October 2006 release, over 5 years after IE6 debuted.

Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a retired series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were used in the Windows line of operating systems. While IE has been discontinued on most Windows editions, it remains supported on certain editions of Windows, such as Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC. Starting in 1995, it was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads or in-service packs and included in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Microsoft spent over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people involved in the project by 1999. In 2015, Microsoft Edge was released to succeed Internet Explorer 11 as Microsoft's primary web browser. New feature development for Internet Explorer was discontinued the following year year, and support for the browser officially ended on June 15, 2022, for Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) editions.

Internet Explorer was once the most widely used web browser, attaining a peak of 95% usage share by 2003. It has since fallen out of general use after retirement. This came after Microsoft used bundling to win the first browser war against Netscape, which was the dominant browser in the 1990s. Its usage share has since declined with the launches of Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008) and with the growing popularity of mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS that do not support Internet Explorer. Microsoft Edge, IE's successor, first overtook Internet Explorer in terms of market share in November 2019. Versions of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also been produced, including an Xbox 360 version called Internet Explorer for Xbox and for platforms Microsoft no longer supports: Internet Explorer for Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX), and an embedded OEM version called Pocket Internet Explorer, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile, made for Windows CE, Windows Phone, and, previously, based on Internet Explorer 7, for Windows Phone 7.

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. After it was sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in September 2002 under the name Phoenix. This name carried the implication of the mythical firebird that rose triumphantly from the ashes of its dead predecessor, in this case Netscape Navigator which lost the "First browser war" to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The name Mozilla began as the internal codename for the original 1994 Netscape Navigator browser aiming to displace NCSA Mosaic as the world's most popular web browser. The name for this would-be "Mosaic killer" was meant to evoke the building-crushing Godzilla.

Orca is a free and open-source, flexible, extensible screen reader from the GNOME project for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Using various combinations of speech synthesis and braille, Orca helps provide access to applications and toolkits that support AT-SPI (e.g., the GNOME desktop, Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice and GTK, Qt and Java Swing/SWT applications).

The name "Orca", which is another term for a killer whale, is a nod to the long-standing tradition of naming screen readers after aquatic creatures, including the Assistive Technology product on Windows called JAWS (which stands for Job Access With Speech), the early DOS screen reader called Flipper, and the UK vision impairment company Dolphin Computer Access.

In computing, multitasking is the concurrent execution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a result, a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in an interleaved manner, while the tasks share common processing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and main memory. Multitasking automatically interrupts the running program, saving its state (partial results, memory contents and computer register contents) and loading the saved state of another program and transferring control to it. This "context switch" may be initiated at fixed time intervals (pre-emptive multitasking), or the running program may be coded to signal to the supervisory software when it can be interrupted (cooperative multitasking).

Multitasking does not require parallel execution of multiple tasks at exactly the same time; instead, it allows more than one task to advance over a given period of time. Even on multiprocessor computers, multitasking allows many more tasks to be run than there are CPUs.