Mozilla Application Suite

Mozilla Application Suite
	Mozilla 1.7 showing Wikipedia's main page
Developer(s)	Mozilla Foundation
Repository	none
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Internet suite
License	MPL, MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license
Website	www.mozilla.org

The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla, marketed as the Mozilla Suite, and code named Seamonkey) was a free, cross-platform Internet suite, whose components include a web browser, an e-mail and news client, an HTML editor, and an IRC client. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator. The development was spearheaded by the Mozilla Organization from 1998 to 2003, and by the Mozilla Foundation since 2003.

As of version 1.7.x, it contains the following components:

Navigator
Mail & Newsgroups, Address Book and Palm Tools
Composer
ChatZilla
Several extensions, including DOM Inspector and Venkman.

Versions 6 and 7 of the Netscape suite were based on the Mozilla Suite. The last official version is 1.7.13, as Mozilla Foundation is now focusing on the development of Firefox and Thunderbird. The suite has also been superseded by SeaMonkey, a community-driven Internet suite that is based on the same source code.

History and development

File:Mozilla 1.0.png

Mozilla 1.0 displaying Wikipedia's main page

In March 1998, Netscape released most of the code base for its popular Netscape Communicator suite under an open source license. The name of the application developed from this would be Mozilla, coordinated by the newly created Mozilla Organization, at the mozilla.org website. Although large parts of the original Communicator code, including the layout engine and front-end related codes, were abandoned shortly thereafter, the Mozilla Organization eventually succeeded in producing a full-featured Internet suite that surpassed Communicator in features, stability and degree of standard-compliance.

Under the AOL banner, Mozilla Organization continued development of the browser and management of the Mozilla source until July 2003 when this task was passed to the Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization composed primarily of developers and staff from mozilla.org and owns the Mozilla trademark (but not the copyright to the source code, which is retained by the individual and corporate contributors, but licensed under the GPL and MPL). It received initial donations from AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, and Mitch Kapor. However all official ties with AOL were severed following the announcement of the end of the Netscape Navigator browser and AOL's agreement to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser in future versions of its AOL software. AOL has since announced it will be using Mozilla's Gecko layout engine.

According to the Mozilla development roadmap published at April 2, 2003, the Mozilla Organization planned to focus development efforts on the new standalone applications: Phoenix (now known as Mozilla Firefox) and Minotaur (now known as Mozilla Thunderbird). To distinguish the suite from the standalone products, the suite is marketed as "Mozilla Suite", or more lengthy "Mozilla Application Suite".

On March 10, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced that they would not release any further official versions of the suite beyond 1.7.x. However, the Mozilla Foundation emphasized that they would provide infrastructure for community members who wished to continue development. In effect, this means that the suite will still continue to be developed, but not by the Mozilla Foundation itself. To avoid confusing organizations that still want to use the Mozilla Suite, it was announced that the new, community-developed product will be named "SeaMonkey", with version numbers that start at "1.0".

Features

Usability and accessibility

Mozilla supports tabbed browsing, which allows users to open multiple web pages in the same browser window. This feature was written with the popular MultiZilla extension for Mozilla as a base. Mozilla also belongs in the group of browsers who early on adopted customizable pop-up blocking.

The browser has a number of features which help users find information. First, Mozilla has an incremental find feature known as "find as you type". With this feature enabled, a user can simply begin typing a word while viewing a web page, and the browser automatically searches for it and highlights the first instance found. As the user types more of the word, the browser refines its search.

Additionally, Mozilla supports the "custom keyword" feature. This feature allows users to access their bookmarks from the location bar using keywords (and an optional query parameter). For example, using a custom keyword, a user can type "google apple" into the address bar and be redirected to the results of a Google search for "apple".

For the mail and newsgroup component, the built-in Bayesian e-mail spam filter can effectively filter out unwanted e-mail spam after a period of training.

Customizability

Mozilla introduced the extension model, which was expanded and improved by Firefox and Thunderbird. Through extensions (installed via XPInstall modules), users may activate new features, such as mouse gestures, advertisement blocking, proxy server switching, and debugging tools.

One can view the extension system as a ground for experimentation, where one can test new functionalities. Occasionally, an extension, or a part of it, becomes part of the official product (for example MultiZilla's tabbed browsing feature eventually became part of the standard Mozilla).

Mozilla also supports a variety of themes/skins, which change its appearance. Themes consist of packages of CSS and image files. The Mozilla Add-ons website offers many themes. Beyond adding a new theme, users can customize its interface by adding and removing some of its buttons and toolbars.

Additionally, Mozilla stores most of its preferences in a list that users can access by typing about:config in the address bar. Some preferences are only available through it, like turning on bookmark icons.

Standards support

The Mozilla Foundation takes pride in Mozilla's compliance with existing standards, especially W3C web standards. Mozilla has extensive support for most basic standards including HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM, MathML, DTD, XSL and XPath.

Mozilla also supports PNG images and variable transparency, (which Internet Explorer only supports fully in version 7). Indeed, Internet Explorer's lack of support for PNG images has occasioned much debate, as many web developers want to move away from the old GIF format, which does not have the same capabilities and image quality as PNG.

Mozilla has implemented most of CSS Level 2 and some of the not-yet-completed CSS Level 3 standard. It was among the first browsers to pass the original Box Acid Test, although it doesn't fully pass the more rigorous Acid2 test for HTML, CSS, and PNG standards support. Other browsers based on newer versions of Mozilla's core technology, however, pass the Acid2 test.

The mail and newsgroup supports POP and IMAP. It also support LDAP address completion. Both reading and writing of HTML e-mails are supported.

Cross-platform support

Mozilla runs on a wide variety of platforms. Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems:

Various versions of Microsoft Windows, including 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, and Server 2003
Mac OS X
Mac OS 9 (discontinued after Mozilla 1.2.1, but an unofficial Mozilla 1.3.1 is available here.)
Linux-based operating systems using X.Org Server or XFree86

Mozilla uses the same format to store users' profiles (which contain their personal browser settings) even on different operating systems, so a profile may be used on multiple platforms, so long as all of the platforms can access the profile (e.g., the profile is stored on a FAT32 partition accessible from both Windows and Linux). This functionality is useful for users who dual-boot their machines. However, it may occasionally cause problems, especially with extensions.

Internationalization and localization

With contributors all over the world, the browser is translated into at least 36 languages/locales, including some of the least-often supported locales, such as Chichewa. Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the string literals displayed to users, part of the internationalization and localization process can be completed easily even by users without a programming background, and requires only a simple text editor.

Web development tools

Mozilla comes with 3 web development tools: a DOM Inspector, Venkman and JavaScript Console. The DOM Inspector is not available in non-Mozilla browsers, and the JavaScript Console is more advanced than the consoles available in non-Mozilla browsers. Venkman is a difficult to use but decent JavaScript debugger. These are installed by default, though you can opt them out (except for the JavaScript Console) with the other install options.

Security

Mozilla was designed with security in mind. Some of its key features include the use of the sandbox security model, same origin policy and external protocol whitelisting.

One key characteristic of Mozilla security is that its source code is visible to everyone. Proposed software changes are reviewed by at least one other person, and typically "super-reviewed" by yet another, and once placed in the software are visible for anyone else to consider, protest, or improve.

In addition, the Mozilla Foundation operates a "bug bounty" scheme: people who report a valid critical security bug receive a $500 (US) cash reward (for each report) and a Mozilla T-shirt. The purpose of this "bug bounty" system is, according to the Mozilla Foundation, to "encourage more people to find and report security bugs in our products, so that we can make our products even more secure than they already are". Note that anyone in the world can report a bug. Also, access to the source code of Mozilla Firefox, internal design documentation, forum discussions, and other materials that can be helpful in finding bugs is available to anyone.

The Mozilla Foundation has issued a security bugs policy to help contributors to deal with security vulnerabilities. The policy restricts access to a security-related bug report to members of the security team until after Mozilla has shipped a fix for the problem. This is intended to deter the exploitation of publicly-known vulnerabilities and give the developers time to issue a patch. While similar to other "responsible disclosure" policies issued by companies such as Microsoft, this policy is opposed to the full disclosure principle favored by some security researchers.

As of June 2005, Secunia has reported 3 unpatched vulnerabilities in Mozilla with the most serious one marked "less critical", versus 20 for Internet Explorer, with the most serious one marked "highly critical", and 0 for Opera.

Criticisms

The major criticism to Mozilla is the software bloating issue. Some components, like the Mozilla Composer, may not be necessary to everyone. The preference panels also contain options that are infrequent to casual users.

Some note that Mozilla takes longer to launch than other browsers. The non-platform-native XUL implementation of the user interface may cause this perceived delay. Other Gecko-based browsers such as K-Meleon which use platform-native user interface implementations generally run faster than Mozilla. Another common criticism involves Mozilla using much more memory than other browsers.

Users switching from Internet Explorer sometimes encounter websites that do not render correctly in Mozilla. Almost always the said website causes this perceived problem by using non-standards-compliant Internet Explorer specific code or ActiveX applets on their site.

Market adoption and project end

Statistics reference: Usage share of web browsers

From 1998 to 2004, the global usage share of Mozilla grew from a negligible amount to about 3%. Because of the Foundation's plan to switch development focus to standalone applications such as Firefox and Thunderbird, many new features and enhancements were not available for Mozilla. This, combined with the community marketing effort named "Spread Firefox", drew more and more users away from Mozilla since late 2004, when Firefox 1.0 was released. There will be no more official releases of the Mozilla Suite beyond version 1.7.13. As of 2006, Mozilla Suite usage share is under 1% and falling. SeaMonkey, a community-driven Internet suite that is based on the same source code, is pursued by those that appreciated Mozilla's feature set.

References

Mozilla Foundation (April 2, 2003). Mozilla Development Roadmap. Retrieved June 11, 2005.
Mozilla Foundation (March 10, 2005). Mozilla Application Suite - Transition Plan. Retrieved March 10, 2005.
SeaMonkey Council (July 2, 2005). SeaMonkey Project Continues Internet Suite. Retrieved March 27, 2007.

External links