2. How Firefox Works
Firefox is a XUL application (see also:
XUL); XUL is a variant of XML used to
describe a GUI that is interpreted by a
renderer, much the same way that HTML is
rendered within the browser, but XUL in-
cludes the browser's menus, buttons,
status bar, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
It's pretty neat; I've been able to put
together some simple GUI apps much fast-
er in XUL than in other frameworks (and
it's platform-independent!).
3. History
The Firefox project began as an experi-
mental branch of the Mozilla project by
Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross. They believed
the commercial requirements of
Netscape's sponsorship and developer-
driven feature creep compromised the
utility of the Mozilla browser.[12] To
combat what they saw as the Mozilla
Suite's software bloat, they created a
stand-alone browser, with which they in-
tended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On
April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization
announced that they planned to change
their focus from the Mozilla Suite to
Firefox and Thunderbird.[13]
4. System requirements
Browsers compiled from Firefox source code may
run on various operating systems; however,
officially distributed binaries are meant for
the following: Microsoft Windows (Windows
2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Win-
dows Vista or Windows 7), Mac OS X 10.4 (or
later) and Linux (with the following librar-
ies installed: GTK+ 2.10 or higher, GLib 2.12
or higher, Pango 1.14 or higher, X.Org 1.0 or
higher *or any TinyX server implementation*).
Official minimum hardware requirements are
Pentium 233 MHz and 64 MB RAM for Windows
version or Macintosh computer with an Intel
x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor and
128 MB RAM for Mac version.[101
5. Portable versions
There is a portable edition of Firefox
for Windows, which can be used from a
USB Flash drive. This particular distri-
bution makes it possible to run Firefox
(and many of its extensions) on corpo-
rate/government networks in lieu of the
default browser. This can be especially
helpful for any user who does not pos-
sess administrative rights on the system
being used.
