Firefox the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko, as with all other iOS web browsers. Firefox was created in 2002 under the codename "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who desired a standalone browser, rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released on November 9, 2004, and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months. Firefox is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla community was
Firefox 4 time. Also on that date, the browser’s usage share was higher than all versions of Safari, Opera and older versions of Firefox with the exception of Firefox 3.6. As a reference, Internet Explorer 9’s usage share first exceeded that of Internet Explorer 6 on May 1, 2011 (48 days after release), and Internet Explorer 9 became the second most used version of Internet Explorer for the first time on May 22, 2011 (69 days after release). According to StatCounter, Firefox 4 reached its usage share peak of 16.7% on June 19, 2011. After that date, it started to decline due