In computing, a plug-in is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. When a program supports plug-ins, it enables customization.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. For further references, a browser support matrix is a table of support of a Webpage by browsers
Mozilla Firefox has features that allow it to be distinguished from other web browsers, such as Chrome and Internet Explorer.
Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is an application programming interface (API) of the Web Browsers that allows plugins to be integrated.
Add-on is the Mozilla term for software modules that can be added to the Firefox web browser and related applications. Mozilla hosts them on its official add-on website.
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition is a repackaged version of Mozilla Firefox created by John T. Haller. The application allows Firefox to be run from a USB flash drive, CD-ROM, or other portable device on any Windows computer or Linux/Unix computer running Wine. The program does not require Firefox to be installed on the computer, nor does it leave personal information on the computer or interfere with any installed versions of Firefox, however, installation on the computer's data storage device is possible. The program is not totally portable, it can't run multiple instances of Firefox out of the box.
A local shared object (LSO), commonly called a Flash cookie, is a piece of data that websites that use Adobe Flash may store on a user's computer. Local shared objects have been used by all versions of Flash Player since version 6.
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation, and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.
GNU IceCat, formerly known as GNU IceWeasel, is a completely free and open-source version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser distributed by the GNU Project. It is compatible with Linux, Windows, Android and macOS.
MicroB was a mobile web browser developed by Nokia for use in smartphones and mobile devices that run the Maemo operating system. The browser is Mozilla-based and uses the Gecko layout engine.
Mozilla Firefox 2 is a version of Firefox, a web browser released on October 24, 2006 by the Mozilla Corporation.
Firefox for Android is a web browser developed by Mozilla for Android smartphones and tablet computers. As with its PC version, it uses the Gecko layout engine, and supports features such as synchronization with Firefox Sync, blocking web trackers, and add-ons.
Google Native Client (NaCl) is a sandboxing technology for running either a subset of Intel x86, ARM, or MIPS native code, or a portable executable, in a sandbox. It allows safely running native code from a web browser, independent of the user operating system, allowing web apps to run at near-native speeds, which aligns with Google's plans for Chrome OS. It may also be used for securing browser plugins, and parts of other applications or full applications such as ZeroVM.
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is a version of the Firefox web browser released in January 2010. The release's main improvement over Firefox 3.5 is improved performance. It uses the Gecko 1.9.2 engine, which improves compliance with web standards. It was codenamed Namoroka. In this version, support for X BitMap images was dropped.
TenFourFox is a web browser for Power Macintosh computers, based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine. It is a port of Mozilla Firefox for PowerPC-based Macintosh computers running Mac OS X to retain compatibility with the older architecture and older versions of the operating system, and to add PowerPC-specific optimizations for improved performance. The project was started after Mozilla announced that it would not release Firefox 4 for PowerPC versions of OS X. Like Firefox, it includes compatibility with a wide range of addons, Acid2 and Acid3 compliance, and HTML 5 and CSS 3 features. It also includes JavaScript just-in-time compilation, custom builds for specific PowerPC processor families, and AltiVec acceleration of key media codecs. The primary maintainer is Cameron Kaiser.
Pale Moon is an open-source web browser with an emphasis on customizability; its motto is "Your browser, Your way". There are official releases for Microsoft Windows and Linux, as well as contributed builds for various platforms.
Waterfox is an open-source web browser for x64, ARM64, and PPC64LE systems. It is intended to be ethical and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked. There are official releases for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android in two versions: Classic and Current. It is also known for allowing to install web browser extensions from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera.
Firefox was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla browser, first released as Firefox 1.0 on November 9, 2004. Starting with version 5.0, a rapid release cycle was put into effect, resulting in a new major version release every six weeks. This was gradually accelerated further in late 2019, so that new major releases occur on four-week cycles starting in 2020. Firefox 95 is the latest version; it was released on December 7, 2021.
Shumway is a discontinued media player for playing SWF files. It was intended as an open-source replacement for Adobe Flash Player. It is licensed under Apache and SIL Open Font License (OFL). Mozilla started development on it in 2012. It was preceded by a failed earlier project called Gordon, a JavaScript library with a similar concept and name, which interprets SWF files with onboard resources of a browser via SVG conversion. These names are an allusion to Flash Gordon and Gordon Shumway.
