Firefox "1," as it is commonly called, was the initial release of the now-popular Mozilla Firefox browser. It came onto the scene after the original "Mozilla" browser, which was based on Netscape's "Gecko" engine. Netscape failed to gain much popularity due to its buggy nature and compatibility issues. However, the Mozilla team built upon its more useful features to produce a browser that could meet and exceed the abilities of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Firefox was released with clear advantages over Internet Explorer. At the time, IE was riddled with security holes that could be exploited by hackers, malware and viruses. Simply browsing to a webpage could infect your computer with hostile software, even if no executable files were knowingly downloaded. Firefox came with a great deal of security "out of the box". This made it immediately attractive to computer savvy users. Many computing enthusiasts installed the browser onto family, friends and colleagues' computers to minimize their security risk. Down the road, this would save those individuals time they would otherwise have likely spent cleaning up malware.

Another of Mozilla Firefox's then-innovative features was tabbed browsing. This allows the user to open multiple web pages in the same window. The only real limitation of how many tabs can be open at any one time is the amount of memory that is available. This prevents the user having to clutter their screen with a confusing mess of browser windows when they are multitasking. In addition, at a time when popup ads were a rampant plague on the Internet, Mozilla Firefox came with a popup blocker built in.

Mozilla Firefox's plugin system allows anyone to expand upon the browser's functionality. Plugins range from as simple as an ad blocker to as complex as a fully-functional FTP client.

Mozilla Firefox is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.