This week in Firefox news

After 19 months of development, two name changes and more than 8 million

downloads of its preview release, the Firefox browser finally turned 1.0. 

The browser, based on theMozilla firefox Foundation's open-source development work, was made available for free download early Tuesday.

Firefox 1.0 isn't significantly different from the preview releases launched in recent months. Mozilla changed its default start page to appeal to new users, but other changes involve minor performance improvements and bug fixes.

The release could nonetheless have a big effect if prerelease trends propel the open-source browser into serious contention with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Download Firefox here: Windows users Mac users And the Mozilla firefox Foundation

is already cooking up its next moves to challenge IE's dominance. Now that it has
the Firefox 1.0 milestone under its belt, the foundation has identified three areas 

for future growth and development: cell phone and small-device browsing, desktop

search integration, and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) distribution. 

"It's been a tremendous year, and we can't see anything but upside the way things are heading right now," said Chris Hofmann, the Mozilla Foundation's director of engineering. "We're just starting the planning for the initiatives that are going to be important in the coming year."

But Microsoft says it doesn't feel threatened by Firefox. Just days after the launch

of Firefox 1.0, Microsoft executives defended IE, saying it's no less secure than 

other browsers and doesn't lack any important features.

At a security roundtable discussion in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, Ben English, Microsoft's security and management product manager, told attendees that IE undergoes

"rigorous code reviews." 

"Because IE is ubiquitous, you hear a lot more about it, but I don't think that Internet

Explorer is any less secure than any other browser out there," English said.