Mozilla

Related Topics:
Mozilla_SeaMonkey :: Mozilla_Foundation :: Mozilla_Thunderbird

Mozilla is a computer term which has had many different uses, though all of them have been related to Netscape Communications Corporation and its related application software. The various uses of the term "Mozilla" are listed below in the order when they were first used:

Codename of Netscape Navigator

Historically, Mozilla had been used internally as a codename for the Netscape Navigator web browser from its beginning. It was a contraction of Mosaic killer, referring to the hope that the project would unseat Mosaic as the web's most popular browser, and making reference to the name of the fictional monster Godzilla.

Mascot of Netscape

Mozilla was the mascot of the now-disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation, formerly called Mosaic Communications Corporation. Initially, the mascot took various forms, including that of a helmeted astronaut or "spaceman", but the eventual choice of a Godzilla-like lizard was no doubt thought to go well with the Godzilla-like name. It was designed by Dave Titus in 1994.

Mozilla was featured prominently on Netscape's website in the company's early years. However, the need to project a more "professional" image (especially towards corporate clients) led to it being removed. Mozilla continued to be used inside Netscape, though, often featuring on T-shirts given to staff or on artwork adorning the walls of the Netscape campus in Mountain View.

When Netscape acquired the website directory NewHoo in 1998, they rebranded it the Open Directory Project with the nickname "dmoz" (Directory of Mozilla) due to its similarity to the Mozilla project. An image of Mozilla was placed on every page of the site, which remains the case today, despite Netscape's disbanding after its acquisition by AOL.

Part of user agent string of many browsers

When users visit a website (via a user agent like web browser), a text string is generally sent to identify the user agent to the web server. It is known as the "user agent string". The Netscape web browser identified itself as "Mozilla/" followed by some information about the operating system it was running on.

Because the Netscape browser initially implemented many features not available in other browsers and quickly came to dominate the market, a number of web sites were designed to only work, or work fully, when they detected an appropriate version of Mozilla in the user agent string. Thus, competing browsers began to emulate (cloak or "spoof") this string in order to also work with those sites. The earliest example of this is Internet Explorer's use of a user agent string beginning "Mozilla/ (compatible; MSIE ...", in order to receive content intended for Netscape, its main rival at the time of its development. This format of user agent string has since been copied by other user agents, and persists today even though Explorer has come to dominate the browser market.

Mozilla project

Mozilla Foundation

"Mozilla" is sometimes used to refer to the free software / open source software project that was founded in order to create the next-generation Internet suite for Netscape. The Mozilla Organization was founded in 1998 to create the new suite. On July 15, 2003, the organization was formally registered as a not-for-profit organization, and became Mozilla Foundation. The foundation now creates and maintains the Mozilla Firefox browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email application, among other products. The Mozilla trademark is held by the Mozilla Foundation as of 2006.

Mozilla Corporation

On August 3, 2005, Mozilla Foundation announced the creation of Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned for-profit taxable subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, that will focus on delivering Firefox and Thunderbird to end users. It will also oversee marketing and sponsorship of the products.

Mozilla Application Suite

In March 1998, Netscape released most of the code base for its popular Netscape Communicator internet suite under an open source license. The name of the application developed from this was named as Mozilla, as it was used as the codename of the original Netscape Navigator. After a series of lengthy pre-1.0 cycles, Mozilla 1.0 was released on June 5, 2002.

The suite was well known as the open source base of the Netscape suite (versions 6 and 7), and its underlying code base (most notably the Gecko layout engine) became the base of many standalone applications, including the Mozilla Foundation's flagship products Firefox and Thunderbird. To distinguish the suite from the standalone products, the suite is often marketed as "Mozilla Suite", or the more lengthy "Mozilla Application Suite".

The Mozilla Foundation no longer maintains the suite, so that their developers can focus on Firefox and Thunderbird. The suite has been unofficially superseded by SeaMonkey, an Internet suite developed by the Mozilla community that is based on the source code of the Mozilla Suite.

A collective name for all Mozilla-based browsers

For simplicity, the word Mozilla is often used to refer to all Mozilla-based browsers. For example, when it is said that a website is usable by Mozilla browsers, it means that it is usable by Mozilla Suite, Firefox, Camino, Netscape 6, etc. In some older Internet statistics programs, the term "Netscape 5.x" is incorrectly used to refer to these browsers because the user agent string starts with Mozilla/5.0.

Mozilla application framework

The term "Mozilla" is also used to refer to the Mozilla application framework, a cross-platform application framework for writing applications that can run on multiple operating systems. It consists most notably of the Gecko layout engine, but also the XUL user-interface toolkit, the Necko networking library, and other components. This is the core that all Mozilla-based browsers and applications are built from.

External links

Mozilla | Netscape | Portmanteaus

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