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Mozilla

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Mozilla is the name of both an open source project to create a free web browser and the browser itself.

In 1998 Netscape released the code base for their popular browser under an open source license and created the Mozilla organization and the mozilla.org website for developers to collaborate on its work.

After some time working on the original Netscape browser code, the Mozilla developers decided to scrap the whole codebase and to start all over again with much more ambitious goals. Despite problems associated with this massive rewrite, the Mozilla project now provides a servicable, standards based web-browser on multiple operating systems. Development of its underlying technologies (such as the Gecko rendering core) have also helped many spin-off/enhancement projects based on the core code. Even Mozilla helper sub-projects have generated spin-offs, such as the Bugzilla bug tracker, the Bonsai CVS code management system needed to build software in a collaborated effort with many outside programmers, and the Tinderbox detective tool that allows developers to see which changes have broken which builds on which platforms.

One unique aspect of the Mozilla browser is that the entire browser, including menu bars and dialog boxes is rendered by the Gecko layout engine rather than being drawn by a 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. A number of browsers exist that use the rendering engine to display only the HTML page.

Early versions of Mozilla were obviously slow and buggy, they became about as stable as Netscape 4.7x only from 0.9.2 or 0.9.3 builds.

From 0.9.5 (October 12th, 2001) onwards the releases have been fast and reliable, largely due to the implementation of formal code review techniques by the Mozilla project managers.

0.9.6 (20 November 2001)

0.9.7 (December 21st, 2001) Favicon support.

0.9.8 (February 4th, 2002) included a Javascript debugger named Venkman and a Document Object Model inspector.

There is only one serious bug in the 0.9.8 release: the 'composer' HTML editor module breaks relative links when it is used to edit pages, by resolving them to local links. Other than that, the browser is an excellent cross-platform alternative to closed-source browsers.

The latest release, 0.9.9 was out on March 11th, 2002. It has a new mail notification sign that appears in the Windows System tray.

The next release should be Mozilla 1.0. This will be the first 'official' release of the browser technology, with intended long-term stable APIs that can be used to support products by other developers.

Browsers based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine

Browsers that use the Gecko layout engine for the entire user interface:

Browsers that use the Gecko layout engine only for the web page content area:

External links:

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