THE MOZILLA FOUNDATION will be celebrating after the web counter outfit Stat Counter revealed that its open source Firefox browser overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the world’s most popular browser for the first time.
The figures show that the Vole’s Internet Exploder 7 has been on a gradual slide this year as users upgraded to IE version 8. However by a strange statistical quirk, IE8 is still not as popular as Mozzarella’s Fireferret 3.5 yet and thus the open sauce furry mammal is for once in its life the world’s number one web browser.

We suspect that by February IE8 will have overtaken Firefox, even though Firefox 3.5 use is still increasing. But it is nice to know that at Winter Solstice 2009, Firefox 3.5 managed to become, even if only briefly, the world’s most used browser.

Last week Mozilla issued a fifth beta of Firefox 3.6 rather than move on to a release candidate. Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 was released as an update to current testers early Thursday, and can also be installed by others who download it from Mozilla’s website.

There are more than 130 fixes from the last beta, which Mozilla released in late November. The release of Firefox 3.6 will not appear until early 2010. (Courtesy: theinquirer.net)