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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Virtual IT: Firefox Gets Linux Enterprise Award

The Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox 1.5 earned the top honor in the virtual IT Enterprise Linux category of the 2006 Datamation Product of the Year Awards. The open source browser won just above second place Red Hat Inc.’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 with over twice the number of votes. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite from Zimbra Inc. placed third, with Asterisk 1.2 in fourth.

Firefox was the talk of the town in early 2005, but its reputation was fading right before Version 1.5 showed up later in the year. The release was just in time to maintain the energy that was surrounding Firefox, a company that has built a great community through Version 1.5, which because it is an open source product has contributions coming from many different places.

The community is what draws many users to the program, according to Mozilla Corp. The fact that Firefox has 40 million to 50 million active users with 50 to 60 percent of them using Version 1.5 creates an amazing phenomenon. There are many different people participating, including people that help test products and are allowed to view source codes and participate in making the products better. Users become a part of the process.

Virtual IT specialists say there are features that only Firefox has that make it a better browser than many of its competitors. The tabbed browsing catches many malicious web content and makes it perfect for both personal and business use. It helps make a computer more user friendly whether the user is a seasoned professional or someone just learning about the Internet and its capabilities.

Spokespeople for Mozilla state they are expecting to release Version 2.0 later in the year, which will hopefully improve upon some of the minor incompatibilities and help better users’ experiences with the browser.

Added By: Joshua Feinberg