The Mozilla Project

Mozilla is a framework for building web applications.

What is Mozilla?

Mozilla is not a web browser. Mozilla is a framework for building web applications using web standards like CSS, XML, RDF.

Mozilla code is used in Netscape 6 and 7, and in other web browsers such as Firefox and Camino, chat clients, news clients, email clients, games, and other types of web applications for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Mozilla is an open-source web development project developing the program code used in the Mozilla Application Suite (also known as SeaMonkey).

The Mozilla Application Suite is a complete set of web applications (browser, email client, news client, chat client and more).

Browsers based on Mozilla code (Mozilla, Firefox, & Camino) is the second largest browser family on the Internet today, representing about 30% of the Internet community. Mozilla browsers are known to have very good web standards support.

The Mozilla Project

The Mozilla Project was created to continue developing Netscape as an open source project.

In November 1998 AOL (America Online) purchased Netscape.

The development of the core engine for Netscape was moved to an open source project called "The Mozilla Project".

The project was renamed SeaMonkey after April 2006 with the Mozilla Foundations main intention of phasing out the Mozilla suite and shifting it's main focus to the Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey projects

The Mozilla Foundation

The Mozilla Foundation was created in July 2003 when AOL laid off the employees involved in the Mozilla open-source browser team.

Mozilla Foundation's Roadmap

The Mozilla project decided to make a new roadmap for the development. Some of the points in the new roadmap is listed below:

• Focus on standalone applications (the FireFox browser, the Thunderbird mail/news application, and standalone composer)
• Make Firefox and Thunderbird the premier products of Mozilla
• Maintain the SeaMonkey (current Mozilla browser) application suite for enterprises and organizations with large Mozilla deployments
• Maintain the Mozilla 1.4 branch as the "distributor/vendor" branch used by organizations with year-long lead times
• Fix crucial Gecko layout architecture bugs. All Mozilla applications benefit from such Gecko improvements
• Prefer quality over quantity. Do less, but better!

Products of Mozilla

• Mozilla - the application suite
• Firefox - a standalone browser
• Thunderbird - an email and newsgroup client
• Camino - a web browser for Mac
• Composer - a web page editor

Versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac can be downloaded from:

http://www.mozilla.org

Confusing Mozilla Names

The very first Netscape browser had a code engine called Mozilla. Netscape 1.0 was powered with a code engine called Mozilla 1.0. Netscape 2.0 used Mozilla 2.0, Netscape 3.0 used Mozilla 3.0, and Netscape 4.0 used Mozilla 4.0.

In 1998 the source code of Netscape 4 was made public - and the development of Netscape 5 was made an open source project.

The open source project for creating Netscape 5 was called "The Mozilla Project". Strangely enough, the code engine for the Mozilla Project was called Gecko.

Unfortunately it took Netscape more than three and a half years after the release of 4.0, to produce its next generation browser. This delay destroyed Netscape's possibilities to remain a credible alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Microsoft released IE 5.0 just after the Mozilla project had started, and was ready with IE 6.0 before Netscape managed to release a workable browser.

Netscape 6.0 based on Gecko M18 (Milestone 18) was released in November 2000.

After the release of Netscape 6.0, the Mozilla Project started to work on Netscape 7 based on an engine called Mozilla 1.0 !!.

Netscape 6 and 7 are built on Mozilla and Netscape and Mozilla are nearly an identical suite of applications.

The current version of Netscape 7 claims to have a code engine called Gecko 1.0 !!

At the moment the Mozilla Project is developing a new web browser called Firefox. Firefox was previously called Mozilla Firebird (which was previously called Phoenix, which claimed to be a new version of Mozilla).

Confused? I am.

The confusing name changes must have something to do with legal issues (I think).

Mozilla Releases

The Mozilla Foundation has released the following versions of Mozilla:

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 5 November 22, 2004

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 4 September 28, 2004

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3 August 18, 2004

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 2 July 14, 2004

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 1 May 20, 2004

Mozilla 1.7.3 September 13, 2004

Mozilla 1.7.2 August 4, 2004

Mozilla 1.7.1 July 8, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 June 17, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 RC3 June 8, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 RC2 May 17, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 RC1 April 21, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 Beta March 18, 2004

Mozilla 1.7 Alpha February 23, 2004

Mozilla 1.6 January 15, 2004

Mozilla 1.6 Beta December 9, 2003

Mozilla 1.6 Alpha October 31, 2003

Mozilla 1.5.1 November 26, 2003

Mozilla 1.5 October 15, 2003

Mozilla 1.5 RC2 September 26, 2003

Mozilla 1.5 RC1 September 17, 2003

Mozilla 1.5 Beta August 27, 2003

Mozilla 1.5 Alpha July 22, 2003

Mozilla 1.4.1 October 10, 2003

Mozilla 1.4 June 30, 2003

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/releases/

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