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 for Android browser components become outdated, increasingly insecure, and unable to properly render modern websites. As a workaround, a Google engineer suggested using the separately-installable and updateable Google Chrome or Firefox browsers. In case of Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x), Google stopped supporting that branch of Android with updates to its Chrome browser after Chrome 43, and move up to Android 4.1 as the oldest release supported by Google Chrome. The open-source nature of Firefox has made it possible to maintain its development for operating system versions that are past their product support lifecycle, and has resulted in Firefox having stronger security and