Mozilla
Mozilla is a computer term that 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 Mozilla (all of which can be referred to by using just the term "Mozilla") are listed below in the order when they were first used:
Codename of Netscape Navigator
Mozilla is a trademark of the Mozilla Foundation and historically 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 a reference to the name of the fictional monster Godzilla.
Mascot of Netscape
Mozilla was the mascot of the now disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation. It had a close relationship with the Mozilla codename. 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 takes the form of a cute green and purple cartoon lizard. It was designed by Dave Titus in 1994.
Mozilla 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 featured 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 similarility 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 "user agent string". The Netscape web browser identified itself as "Mozilla/<version>" 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/<version> (compatible; MSIE <version>...", 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.
See also: Browser wars
Mozilla project
- Main articles: Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation
"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 e-mail application, among other products.
On August 3, 2005, Mozilla Foundation announced the creation of Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, that will focus on delivering Firefox and Thunderbird to end users. It will also oversee marketing and sponsorships of the products.
Mozilla Application Suite (the base of Netscape 6-7)
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 last official series of the suite is 1.7.x. Mozilla Foundation will no longer release new versions of the suite, so that developers can focus on Firefox and Thunderbird. The suite will be 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.
The 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.