Mozilla Application Suite

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Mozilla Application Suite

Mozilla Suite Logo.png
Mozilla-req.png
Mozilla on GNU / Linux
Basic data

developer Mozilla Foundation
Publishing year 2002
Current  version 1.7.13
(April 21, 2006)
operating system platform independent
programming language C ++ , JavaScript
category Program collection from browser , e-mail program, etc.
License MPL / GPL / LGPL multiple licensing
German speaking Yes
www-archive.mozilla.org

Mozilla Application Suite [ moʊˈzɪlə ˌæplɪˈkeɪʃn swiːt ] (also Mozilla Suite or simply Mozilla , see also the general term Mozilla ) was a free program package consisting of a web browser , e-mail program and other programs. In the meantime, the Mozilla Foundation has ceased official development in favor of the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email program . Since then, the suite has been maintained by a small community of developers under the new name SeaMonkey . The Mozilla Suite is available under several free licenses such as the in-house Mozilla Public License (MPL), as well as the GPL and LGPL .

history

Mozilla was based on the 1998 by the Netscape Corporation released the source code of Netscape Communicator ; Mozilla did not contain much of this code base . Mozilla's (rewritten) layout engine is called Gecko .

Originally, the word Mozilla was just the company name for the Netscape web browser . There are several explanations for the exact origin of the name, which refers to the first popular web browser, Mosaic . One says it is made up of Mosaic Killa , the other says it is made up of Mosaic and Godzilla . The official Netscape mascot, a green lizard, and the dinosaur used by Mozilla , both of which are named Mozilla , point to the latter explanation. However, it is conceivable and perhaps more likely that the mascot was chosen because of the similarity of the name Mozilla with the well-known character Godzilla . Assuming a subsequent interpretation based on the similarity of the mascot with the Godzilla figure as Mo saic God zilla , Mozilla would be a backronym in this respect .

history

Mozilla 1.0 was released on June 5, 2002, the last stable version 1.7.13 on April 22, 2006. After that, the further development of the Mozilla suite was stopped by the Mozilla Corporation . The project is now being continued by an independent group of programmers under the name SeaMonkey . Release dates of the individual versions of the suite are arranged on the following timetable.

Features and functions

Mozilla ran on many different operating systems ( platforms ). This was made possible by the fact that large parts of Mozilla were platform-independent . The main work involved in porting the Netscape Portable Runtime , which is a general interface for e.g. B. Defined file access and memory management.

The program interface was written in the specially developed, platform-independent language XUL , which is based on XML . Similar to websites, the elements of this interface were displayed by Gecko and not by the operating system. This has the advantage that a developer does not need knowledge of several operating systems to make changes to the user interface. XUL also made it possible to easily adapt or expand the Mozilla user interface using so-called extensions . XUL also supports so-called themes , which are created on the basis of web standards such as Document Object Model and Cascading Style Sheets and with which the appearance of Mozilla could be adapted to one's own taste. A disadvantage, however, was that a XUL-based interface runs slower on older computers.

Mozilla was also able to apply stylesheets to HTML and XML pages. For this purpose, the standards CSS 1 to 3 (CSS 1 completely, CSS 2 almost completely, CSS 3 partially) and XSLT were supported. There was also a pop-up blocker and tabbed browsing and caret browsing functions .

Experienced users were able to influence the appearance and behavior of Mozilla by editing the configuration, accessible in Mozilla browsers by entering about: config in the address bar, and by creating a so-called user style sheet .

Mail and news components, HTML editor and other additional programs

Mail component of Mozilla 1.6 with "Orbit 3 + 1" theme under Linux

In addition to the browser, Mozilla also included a complete e-mail program including an address book. One of the most important features was the adaptive spam filter based on Bayesian probability theory , which was included from version 1.3 . After a learning phase in which the user classified e-mails as “junk” and “not junk”, the program had very good hit rates. The mail program supports any number of POP3 and IMAP mailboxes per user. It also allowed the creation of filter rules, through which e-mails could be automatically pre-sorted into any folder, and had many options for adapting the program to the preferences of the user. Encryption and signing of e-mails were carried out transparently and easily for the user using the S / MIME standard. With the help of the Enigmail extension , encrypted e-mail communication was also possible via PGP . It was also possible to subscribe to newsgroups and write articles for them.

The program module Composer for editing and creating HTML pages was also included; it enabled the creation of websites according to the WYSIWYG principle, but direct editing of the source code was also possible.

The Mozilla suite also had a module called ChatZilla for chatting in IRC networks.

Mozilla offered some troubleshooting functions that are important for website and JavaScript developers in the form of integrated web development tools . These included the JavaScript console, which allowed direct entry of JavaScript commands, the JavaScript debugger Venkman and the DOM Inspector tool , which allowed the tree-like structure of websites to be inspected and analyzed and thus possible errors in the structure to be discovered .

Venkman

Venkman is the JavaScript - debugger component of the Mozilla Application Suite for Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox 3.x, Netscape 7.x and 9.x and Seamonkey> 1.x. Since it does not exist as a built-in feature in Firefox, Venkman is also available as an extension for Mozilla Firefox. Venkman is named after Dr. Peter Venkman , played by Bill Murray , named from the movies Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II .

Part of the user agent string in many browsers

See also: Mozilla , User Agent

For many browsers today, the identification string begins with Mozilla , because when Netscape was the market leader in browsers, many websites required them to be displayed. So the other browser manufacturers started to pretend to be the Netscape browser by also using Mozilla at the beginning of their identification string.

Variants and derivatives

The Netscape Communicator version 6.x and 7.x are based on the Mozilla code.

Since Mozilla's code was often criticized as being too big and confusing, various projects were formed that wanted to create a faster, leaner and easier-to-maintain browser based on Gecko . These are among others:

Cessation of further development

The roadmap of Mozilla stipulated that the project focuses more on individual products and on the other hand, the suite supplied only in the stable branch 1.7 with security updates from later Milestones no final, official versions more published, but developers provides assistance when on base want to release their own versions of the suite of the Mozilla code. The Mozilla project itself wants to concentrate entirely on the further development of Mozilla Firefox ( browser ) and Mozilla Thunderbird ( e-mail program ). The main reason for this change is that the acceptance of individual applications by the users was assumed to be higher than that of a complete application suite, stimulated by the popularity of Firefox . The further development of the editor (composer) as a single application "Nvu" as an external project was discontinued after version 1.0 of Linspire. A more advanced version of the HTML editor is a spin-off from NVU called KompoZer , which is developed by Fabien Cazenave.

After the Mozilla Foundation announced that it would end its support for the suite, some former Mozilla developers came together to further develop the Mozilla suite and thus continue the program under the name SeaMonkey in the form of an Internet suite. After the Mozilla Foundation had registered the name SeaMonkey as a trademark, the project was officially announced on July 2, 2005. On January 30th, 2006 the first stable version 1.0 was released.

See also

Web links

Commons : Mozilla  album with pictures, videos and audio files