Firefox 1.0 Released

Firefox 10 Released
Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a serious rival in the long-awaited Firefox 1.0 web browser, which has just been released.

Few people get excited when some new software is released, especially when the program is not a game or a music or movie player.

But the release of the first full version of Firefox has managed to drum up a respectable amount of pre-launch fervour.

Fans of the software have banded together to raise cash to pay for an advert in the New York Times announcing that version 1.0 of the browser is available.

The release of Firefox 1.0 on 9 November might even cause a few heads to turn at Microsoft because the program is steadily winning people away from the software giant's Internet Explorer browser.

Firefox has been created by the Mozilla Foundation which was started by former browser maker Netscape back in 1998.

Much of the development work done since then has gone into Firefox which made its first appearance under this name in February. Earlier incarnations, but which had the same core technology, were called Phoenix and Firebird.

Since then the software has been gaining praise and converts, not least because of the large number of security problems that have come to light in Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Rivals to IE got a boost in late June when two US computer security organ