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 3.5 Net Applications, respectively. Due to the January 2010, well-publicized vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, the German, French, and Australian governments had publicly issued warnings to Internet Explorer users to use alternative browsers, at least until a fix for the security hole was made. The first browser they recommended was Mozilla Firefox, followed by Google Chrome. Even before the release of Firefox 3.0 on June 17, 2008, Firefox 3.1 was in development under the codename "Shiretoko". It was planned to include new interface features such as tab previews, tag auto-completion, HTML 5 <video> tag support, and CSS text shadows. The