Firefox faces challenges as it matures

 When version 1.0 of Firefox was released in November 2004, it caused a sensation as a seemingly more secure and more feature-rich option to Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous Internet Explorer (IE) which for years had held a market share north of 90 percent and which Microsoft had barely bothered to improve.

Since Firefox 1.0 was released, it has achieved what no other browser had accomplished in years: attain a significant market share at IE's expense. Firefox now holds a market share of between 7 percent and 9 percent, according to various market research estimates.

But as Firefox nears its first birthday, its maker, The Mozilla Foundation, faces significant challenges, analysts say. These include quickly discovering and fixing security vulnerabilities, competing against an upcoming IE upgrade and broadening Firefox's user base beyond its core of technically savvy users.

The stream of Firefox security vulnerabilities uncovered in recent months is par for the course for a young software product. But it may disappoint users who switched to Firefox expecting it would be immune to security holes.

While the myth of Firefox as a totally secure browser evaporates, Microsoft is now upgrading IE to try and close the features gap that has attracted users to Firefox. IE 7 is now in a test, or beta, phase. Mozilla must keep Firefox one step ahead of IE in features and innovation, a bigger challenge now that Microsoft is for the first time in years paying attention to its browser's development.

Finally, although Firefox has anywhere between 40 million and 50 million active users, according to Mozilla, it needs to appeal to more mainstream individual users as well as to corporate IT departments, in order to give its usage growth a boost, analysts say.

Mozilla isn't keeping still. The first major Firefox upgrade, code-named Deer Park and also known as version 1.5, is now in beta testing and is slated for general availability by November or December of this year.

The new and improved features in Firefox 1.5 are adequate and convenient, but not earth-shattering, and the coming months will be critical for Firefox to hold on to its user base and remain a viable alternative to IE, analysts say.

"Firefox 1.5 features improvements that are necessary and valuable but not necessarily compelling. It will not re-energize the usage growth, which is going through a natural slowing down that happens with maturity," said Ray Valdes, a Gartner Inc. analyst.

Firefox 1.5 features enhancements in usability, performance, extensibility, security and privacy, including faster Web navigation, due to advanced capabilities for caching and pre-rendering content, Chris Beard, head of products and marketing at Mozilla Corp., told IDG News Service recently. Mozilla Corp. is the subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that is charged with developing, marketing and distributing Mozilla products.

The product's tabbed browsing feature has also been improved by making it possible for users to rearrange pages by dragging and dropping them, Beard said.

In terms of security and privacy, the biggest improvement is an automated update feature to make it easy for users to keep their browser current with the latest improvements and patches available for it, Beard said. For example, with the current version users have to download the entire browser again to get updates, but with Firefox 1.5 users will be able to simply download the patches, making the process faster, he said.