Introducing Firefox

By far, the most visible use for computer networking technology worldwide is for access to the many sites and pages of the World Wide Web. It is widely known that the most common platform for accessing the Web is the Internet Explorer web browser. Although Internet Explorer is available for both Windows and Mac OS, Microsoft has chosen not to produce a version of Internet Explorer for Linux.

Linux web users have always been supported instead by Netscape Corporation and the Netscape web browser. In 1998, Netscape Corporation made the Netscape web browser an open-source product, and the Mozilla project was born. Firefox is a modern, feature-full, standards-compliant web browser created by the Mozilla project, and is now the primary platform for browsing the Web on the Linux desktop.

Launching the Firefox Browser

To launch the Firefox web browser, choose Applications, Internet, Firefox Web Browser or click the web browser icon on the menubar. The icon appears as a picture of a computer mouse circling the globe.