The name Mozilla had been used internally for the web browser Netscape Navigator from its beginning. The name arose because Netscape Navigator was to be the successor
to the web browser Mosaic and was a contraction of Mosaic-killer Godzilla. This name was not used externally, but references to it could be found in pictures of Godzilla associated with Netscape Navigator.
In February 1998, Netscape released most of the code base for its popular Netscape Communicator suite (including the Netscape Navigator browser) under an open source license. The name of the application developed from this would be Mozilla, co-ordinated by the newly-created Mozilla organization, at the mozilla.org website.
Although the original Communicator code was abandoned shortly thereafter, the Mozilla organization eventually succeeded in producing a full-featured Internet suite that surpassed Communicator in both features and stability.
Under the AOL banner, Mozilla.org continued development of the browser and management of the Mozilla source until July 2003 when this task passed to The Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organisation composed primarily of developers and staff from mozilla.org and owns all intellectual property related to Mozilla. It received initial donations from AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat, however all official ties with AOL were severed following the announcement of the end of the Netscape Navigator browser and AOL's agreement to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser in future versions of its AOL software. (AOL has since announced it will be using Mozilla's Gecko layout engine.)
Like many other large software projects, Mozilla itself has become a platform for other programs and libraries written in its domain specific programming environment. Extensions vary widely in complexity, ranging from simple JavaScript-based bookmarklets, to Mozilla feature extensions (such as support for mouse gestures and pie menus), to full-fledged standalone programs. A partial list of programs and extensions for the Mozilla platform can be found on the http://mozdev.org website.
The Netscape Communicator open source release, which came at the height of America's late-1990s economic boom, was greeted by the Internet community with a mixture of acclaim and skepticism. In some circles, Netscape's source release was seen as both a victory for the free software movement and an opportunity for Netscape to tap the power of open source development. This view was particularly popular among users of Linux and other free software. Other observers—including many in the non-open-source business community—interpreted the move as Netscape's surrender in the face of the growing ascendancy of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
Regardless of the public's opinion, development with the Communicator code base proved harder than initially hoped:
Ultimately, the Mozilla core developers concluded that the old code could not be salvaged. They decided to scrap the whole code base and rewrite it from the ground up, which caused one of the lead Netscape developers, Jamie Zawinski, to resign. The resulting plan included, among other things, the creation of a whole new cross-platform user interface library and a new HTML rendering engine.
Few observers foresaw the result. The rapid completion of the Gecko HTML layout engine led many to believe that a complete browser could not be far behind. However, producing even a fully functional web browser required much more than a rendering engine; and the Mozilla developers soon envisioned a project more ambitious than a simple web browser. The new Mozilla would be a platform for Internet applications, with a fully programmable user interface and a modular architecture. This Mozilla would function equally well as a host for email clients, instant messaging clients, Usenet news readers, or any number of other applications.
Due to the effort required for this massive rewrite, the project fell far behind its original projected deadlines. In the years that followed, skepticism about Mozilla grew widespread, and some doubted that a finished Mozilla browser would ever see the light of day. However, the project persisted, continuing uninterrupted through both the purchase of Netscape by AOL and the end of the dot-com boom.
By 2002, the Mozilla project had produced a serviceable, standards-based web browser that worked on multiple operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows. The Mozilla 1.0 release was even praised for introducing new features that Internet Explorer lacked, including better support for user privacy preferences and some interface improvements. Additionally, the Mozilla browser became a de facto reference implementation for various World Wide Web Consortium standards, due to its strong support for those standards. Current versions of Mozilla are highly customisable and include advanced features such as cookie, popup, password and image management and tabbed browsing.
On July 15th 2003, AOL announced that it would axe off its browser division, which was in essence, Netscape's Mozilla. Far from being the end, this was the beginning of the Mozilla Foundation, formed by former Netscape/Mozilla veterans to take responsibility of the development of Mozilla. As a consolation AOL pledged $2 million to help the new formed foundation.
Many people had been expecting this, after AOL reached a settlement with competitior, Microsoft, with a deal for the AOL software to use Internet Explorer for the next 7 years. Netscape had always been seen as a bargaining chip for AOL against Microsoft.
AOL laid off most of Netscape's employees and hackers, except for some who were transferred to other divisions. Netscape signs were seen being pulled off its building, confirming what many took as the end of Netscape. AOL will be keeping the Netscape brand for its portal, but all new Netscape browser development is expected to cease, with the last major version being 7.1 (based on mozilla 1.4).
Mozilla, a product originally aimed at developers instead of end users, now faces the challenge of marketing to the masses.
A new development roadmap has been released which marks a change in the future plans for Mozilla.
Instead of the current integrated "cross-platform front end" (XPFE) application, Mozilla will become a suite of smaller applications sharing common back-end technology such as the XUL user-interface framework and the Gecko rendering engine. They will continue to work seamlessly with one another, as before, but will be able to integrate better with third-party applications. By cutting the functionality of the suite into pieces, this is intended to improve the project in several ways, by
The Mozilla software architecture was, of necessity, fairly modular. As a result, Mozilla development generated several components that have been reused in other contexts. The most prominent of these is the Gecko layout engine, which has been used in other browsers (see Spin-off browsers below).
Also, the task of Mozilla development itself spurred the creation of tools for geographically distributed, cross-platform software development. Some of these tools were widely adopted by the larger open source community, including the following:
One unique aspect of Mozilla is that the entire user interface, including menus and dialog boxes, is rendered by the Gecko layout engine, rather than by the host operating system's GUI library. This architecture has been controversial. Its defenders cite its flexibility and the fact that it can present a standard GUI across different platforms. Its critics argue that this architecture adversely impacts performance, and that it is a widely-accepted convention of application design to use the native GUI elements of the operating system interface. A number of browsers exist that use the rendering engine only to display the HTML page (see below).
The Mozilla project takes its name from the cartoon lizard Mozilla, who served as Netscape's mascot in the company's early days. The name is a portmanteau of "Mosaic" (the Netscape browser's predecessor) and "Godzilla" (a movie monster that terrorized Tokyo and other locales). One can surmise that the employees of Netscape hoped to unseat Mosaic as the web's most popular browser. They succeeded---albeit briefly, yielding the position to Internet Explorer soon after. For more on the Mozilla mascot, see the external link for "The Mozilla Museum" (below).
When given the URL about:mozilla, the various versions of the Netscape browser would display a message, in white text on a lurid red background, in the browser window. Versions 1 to 4 displayed the following prophecy:
Later Netscape browser versions (as well as the Mozilla browser itself), which were actually based on the Mozilla code, displayed the following:
The next installment (7:15) is said to be written by Neil Deakin, to mark the establishment of the Mozilla Foundation, which cuts Mozilla loose from its parent company Netscape/AOL. Moreover it hints at the separation of the browser (Firebird) and the mail-client (Thunderbird). This is a reference to the name "Phoenix," which was what Mozilla Firebird was called before the name was changed to avoid copyright difficulty.
Early versions of Mozilla were slow and buggy. Mozilla became about as stable as Netscape 4.7x only from 0.9.2 or 0.9.3 builds onwards. From 0.9.5 (October 12, 2001) onwards the releases have been fast and reliable, largely due to the implementation of formal code review techniques by the Mozilla project managers.
Overview
History of Mozilla
As a result, the initial Communicator open source release did not even build cleanly, much less run. This presented steep challenges to the Mozilla core developers (most of whom were still on Netscape's payroll), and even steeper challenges to independent developers wishing to contribute to Mozilla on their own.Future development of the Mozilla platform
This is not a long-term goal: the Firebird (formerly Phoenix) browser is already in an advanced state of development, and the Thunderbird (formerly Minotaur) mail client is in the early stages of being factored out from XPFE.Mozilla technology
Subprojects
Notable features of Mozilla's design
Origins and prophecies: the "Mozilla" name
"Their tags shall blink" refers to the controversial <blink> HTML tag introduced in an earlier Netscape version. This proprietary HTML extension, which made text blink on and off, was widely derided as annoying, distracting, and ugly. Soon after its introduction, the blink tag joined hideously garish backgrounds and animated GIFs as metonymy for badly designed web pages. The numbers 12:10 refer to the release date of Netscape 1.0, December 10, 1994.
This text probably referred to Netscape's hope that, by opening the Mozilla source, they could attract a "legion" of developers who would help improve the software. Some suggested that "Mammon" referred obliquely to Microsoft, which seemed plausible given that Microsoft's Internet Explorer was Mozilla's chief competition. The numbers 3:31 refer to March 31 1998, the date which Netscape 5.0 was made open source.Version History
| Version | Release date | Most important changes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milestone 1 | December 10, 1998 | (a.k.a. Gecko Developer Release) Conversion to the "raptor" codebase; about 100 bugfixes | |
| Milestone 2 | January 31, 1999 | Platform parity (Windows / Linux / MacOS); about 85 bugfixes | |
| Milestone 3 | March 19, 1999 | Simple Sidebar, Preferences | |
| Milestone 4 | April 15, 1999 | Minimal Profile, Mac Mail, IMAP | |
| Milestone 5 | May 5, 1999 | Component Jar Installers, XPConnect | |
| Milestone 6 | May 29, 1999 | Componentization, History | |
| Milestone 7 | June 22, 1999 | Necko Phase 1 | |
| Milestone 8 | July 16, 1999 | Necko, XP Toolkit | |
| Milestone 9 | August 26, 1999 | Necko Landing and Recovery | |
| Milestone 10 | October 8, 1999 | Continued Feature Work, Performance and Stability | |
| Milestone 11 | November 16, 1999 | Space and time analysis and optimizations | |
| Milestone 12 | December 21, 1999 | Performance, Stabilization | |
| Milestone 13 | January 26, 2000 | (a.k.a. Mozilla Alpha Release) Archechtural Landings, Feature Work | |
| Milestone 14 | March 1, 2000 | Focus on Clean up and Stability | |
| Milestone 15 | April 18, 2000 | Crypto Landed, Webshell Update Landed, Skinable UI, Other Architectural work | |
| Milestone 16 | June 13, 2000 | Autocomplete, Chatzilla, HTTP/1.1 support, skin support, full session history support | |
| Milestone 17 | August 7, 2000 | Classic theme, alpha transparency, MNG support, plugin support on Linux | |
| Milestone 18 | October 12, 2000 | Java support on Linux, Modern theme | |
| Mozilla 0.6 | December 6, 2000 | source-only release of the base for Netscape 6.0 | |
| Mozilla 0.7 | January 9, 2001 | Personal security manager; SSL and mousewheel support on MacOS; forced reloads from server | |
| Mozilla 0.8 | February 14, 2001 | Find and replace; first introduction of pop-up blocking; improved bookmark manager | |
| Mozilla 0.8.1 | March 26, 2001 | Improved Chatzilla and Javascript Console; initial gopher support | |
| Mozilla 0.9 | May 7, 2001 | Automatic proxy configuration; personal security manager 2.0; performance improvements | |
| Mozilla 0.9.1 | June 7, 2001 | 34 crasher bugs fixed; overhauled Modern theme; XSLT support; bidi support for Hebrew and Arabic | |
| Mozilla 0.9.2 | June 28, 2001 | 25 crasher bugs fixed; Quick Launch (preloading to reduce startup times) implemented on Windows | |
| Mozilla 0.9.3 | August 2, 2001 | More stability work (Mozilla is now considered more stable than Netscape 4.78) | |
| Mozilla 0.9.2.1 | August 8, 2001 | source-only release of the base for Netscape 6.1 | |
| Mozilla 0.9.4 | September 14, 2001 | Quick Launch enabled by default; Arabic language support on Linux | |
| Mozilla 0.9.5 | October 12, 2001 | Tabbed Browsing; SOCKS support for almost all protocols; ECMAScript debugger Venkman | |
| Mozilla 0.9.6 | November 20, 2001 | Page icons displayed in toolbar (except for favicons); print preview; BMP and ICO support on all platforms | |
| Mozilla 0.9.4.1 | October 31, 2001 | source-only release of the base for Netscape 6.2 | |
| Mozilla 0.9.7 | December 21, 2001 | Favicon support. | |
| Mozilla 0.9.8 | February 4, 2002 | Hebrew support on Solaris; Hebrew and Arabic support on MacOS; Document Object Model inspector | |
| Mozilla 0.9.9 | March 11, 2002 | a new mail notification sign that appears in the Windows System tray. | |
| Mozilla 1.0 RC1 | April 18, 2002 | Viewing source of cgi generated pages works, reorganized menus, new Download Manager | |
| Mozilla 1.0 RC2 | May 10, 2002 | ||
| Mozilla 1.0 RC3 | May 23, 2002 | 139 bug fixes since RC2. | |
| Mozilla 1.0 | June 5, 2002 | first 'official' release | |
| Mozilla 1.1 | August 26, 2002 | performance, stability, compatibility and standards conformance improved | |
| Mozilla 1.0.1 | September 10, 2002 | over 650 bugfixes to 1.0. | |
| Mozilla 1.2 | November 26, 2002 | type ahead find, improved keyboard access, link prefetching | |
| Mozilla 1.2.1 | December 2, 2002 | released to correct a DHTML bug found in Mozilla 1.2 | |
| Mozilla 1.0.2 | January 7, 2003 | stability and security improvements and fixes for standards support | |
| Mozilla 1.3 | March 13, 2003 | basic junk mail classification capabilities and image auto sizing | |
| Mozilla 1.3.1 | May 7, 2003 | released to restore XPI functionality on Mac OS X | |
| Mozilla 1.4b | May 7, 2003 | ||
| Mozilla 1.4 RC1 | May 29, 2003 | more junk mail controls, smooth scrolling, bookmarks overhaul, streamlined pop-up blocking | |
| Mozilla 1.4 RC2 | June 17, 2003 | Lots of bug fixes. | |
| Mozilla 1.4 RC3 | June 24, 2003 | More bug fixes. | |
| Mozilla 1.4 | June 30, 2003 | Official 1.4 release. | |
| Mozilla 1.4.1 | October 12, 2003 | About 100 bug fixes, spell checker. | |
| Mozilla 1.5a | July 22, 2003 | Composer improvements. MNG support removed. | |
| Mozilla 1.5b | August 27, 2003 | Spellchecker for Mail/News and Composer, Color support for <HR> tags | |
| Mozilla 1.5 | October 15, 2003 | ||
| Mozilla 1.6a | October 31, 2003 | Mail enhancements, about:about feature | |
| Mozilla 1.6b | December 9, 2003 |
Early reviews of Mozilla 1.0 were favorable, describing Mozilla as fast and stable, and praising new features such as tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking.
One advanced setting which is highly beneficial to users of Mozilla is the ability to use the pipelining feature of HTTP 1.1, which results in much faster download times for sites with multiple images.
Spin-off Browsers
Browsers that use the Gecko layout engine for the entire user interface
Browsers that use the Gecko layout engine for webpage display only
Other projects based on Mozilla code
External links