Welcome to the new Web

USATODAY has filed another report in the recent stream of articles about the Firefox browser which has just recently reached version 1.0, for official release.

I've raved previously about Firefox but that was just the preview releases. The preview had built-in popup-blocking, tabbed browsing (one browser, many websites at once), Google bar(s) and a bookmark bar allowing you to drag and drop bookmarks onto a bar making them easy to remember later.

On top of that, Firefox 1.0 is now integrated with the emerging blog-tracking technology, called RSS, which allows it to display headlines and other live information in your bookmark menu. An icon apears for sites that have RSS enabled and if you click it a bookmark folder is added to your bookmarks menu. But this bookmark folder is updated live with the latest headlines from the site.

As if that wasn't enough Firefox has a slew of Extensions to do everything under the sun. They've got Opera's mouse gestures, an in-page adblocker, a highlight function to extend the Google bar and BugMeNot a tool that will automatically log you in to sites that require free-registration, like SMH or any other newspaper, with just a right click on the username box.

On top of that it is completely skinnable, with numerous contributed Themes. My favourite is the one that makes your browser look like it was designed by a three year old with a crayon, though for everyday use I go with something a little more sleek.

On the strength of this kind of innovation The Mozilla Foundation (which manages the development of Firefox) is hoping to see 10 million downloads in 100 days. As I write their website is straining to handle the demand, even though Firefox is a mere 4.7Mb download.

And the impact is being noticed. Microsoft Internet Explorer's marketshare of 95.7% had held steady ever since it dispatched Netscape by bundling its browser with it's operating system Windows. However it has been falling ever since mid-year when security experts recommended concerned users switch to Firefox. It's only down to 92%, but that shift represents 3% of the world-wide web, or millions of people changing over.

So people, join the revolution...

Related Link