Mozilla Application Suite

Mozilla Application Suite [ moʊzɪlə ˌ æplɪkeɪʃn swi ː t] ( Mozilla Suite or just Mozilla, see also general term Mozilla) was composed of web browser, email program and other tools free program collection (English Application Suite ) for the Internet, from Mozilla project has been developed. Meanwhile, the Mozilla Foundation has set the official development in favor of the Firefox web browser and email program Thunderbird. The suite has since been further maintained under the new name SeaMonkey from a small developer community. The Mozilla Suite is under several free licenses such as the in-house Mozilla Public License ( MPL), as well as the GPL and LGPL.

• 3.1 Venkman

History

Mozilla is based on the 1998 released by the Netscape Corporation source code of Netscape Communicator; of this code base contains, however, Mozilla does not have much. Mozilla ( rewritten ) internal layout engine called Gecko.

Originally the word Mozilla was only the company's internal name for the Netscape web browser. For exact origin of the name, which refers to the first popular web browser Mosaic, there are several explanations. One says that it is composed of Mosaic Killa, according to the other of Mosaic and Godzilla. The Official Netscape 's mascot, a green lizard, and used in Mozilla dinosaurs that both bear the name Mozilla, point to the latter explanation; however, it is conceivable, and perhaps likely, that the mascot was chosen with the well-known figure Godzilla because of the name similarity of Mozilla. One of the two interpretations of the meaning of Mozilla is therefore a backronym.

Revision history

Mozilla 1.0 was released on June 5, 2002. The latest stable version 1.7.13 was released on 22 April 2006. Thereafter, the development of the Mozilla suite by the Mozilla Corporation was set. The project is now being conducted by an independent programmer group called SeaMonkey. Release dates of the individual versions of the suite are located on the following time table.

Features and Functions

Mozilla is currently running on many different operating systems ( platforms). This is possible that large parts of Mozilla are platform independent. The main work in porting attributable to the Netscape Portable Runtime, which defines a common interface, eg for file access and memory management.

The program interface is written in the specially developed, also platform-independent language XUL, the XML-based. The elements of this surface are similar to web pages represented by gecko and not by the operating system. This has the advantage that a developer does not need knowledge of multiple operating systems for changes in the surface. XUL also allows to adapt the Mozilla surface in a simple manner by so-called Extensions or expand. XUL also supports so-called themes that are created based on web standards such as Document Object Model and Cascading Style Sheets, and with which the appearance of Mozilla can be customized to your own taste. A disadvantage is that a XUL -based interface on older computers running slower.

Mozilla is also applicable in a position stylesheets on HTML and XML pages. Implementing the standards CSS currently are 1 to 3 ( 1 is completely CSS, CSS 2 almost completely, CSS part 3) and XSLT support. There is also a pop-up blocker and the function of the tabbed browsing and the caret browsing.

For advanced users, it is possible the appearance and behavior of Mozilla by editing the configuration in Mozilla browsers accessible by entering about: config to influence in the address bar, and the creation of a so-called user style sheets.

Mail and news component, HTML editor and other utilities

In addition to the Mozilla browser also includes a complete email program including address. One of the main features is the included since version 1.3 adaptive spam filtering based on Bayesian probability theory. After a learning phase, in which the user email messages classified as " junk " and " Not Junk", the program has a very good hit rate. The mail program supports any number of POP3 and IMAP mailboxes per user. It also allows the creation of filtering rules that can be automatically sorted in any folder by e-mail, and has very many possibilities to customize the program to the preferences of the user. Encryption and signing of e- mails are carried out with the S / MIME standard, transparent and simple for the user. Using the extension Enigmail encrypted e -mail communication is also possible via PGP. In addition, subscribing to newsgroups, and the writing of articles for this is possible.

Also included is the program module Composer to edit and create HTML pages; allows the creation of web pages on the WYSIWYG principle, but also the direct editing of the source code is possible.

Furthermore, the Mozilla suite has a module called ChatZilla for chatting in IRC networks.

Mozilla provides some important for websites and JavaScript developers troubleshooting capabilities in the form of integrated web development tools. These include the JavaScript console, which allows the direct entry of JavaScript commands, to discover the JavaScript debugger Venkman and the tool DOM Inspector, which allows to inspect the tree-like structure of web pages and to analyze and thus possible errors in construction.

Venkman

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

Part of the user-agent strings in many browsers

In many of today's browsers, the identification string with Mozilla starts, the reason is that at the time when Netscape was the market leader in browsers, many sites these presuppose to display. Therefore caught the other browser makers to impersonate for the Netscape browser by Mozilla also used at the beginning of its identification string.

Variants and derivatives

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

Since the code of Mozilla has often been criticized as being too large and confusing, various projects that want to create a faster, slimmer and lighter serviceable browser based on Gecko formed. These include:

• Mozilla Firefox (formerly: Phoenix, Firebird)
• Flock ( Up to version 2 it is based on Firefox, since version 3 on Chromium )
• Galeon ( for Gnome)
• Epiphany ( the default browser for GNOME)
• Mozilla Camino (formerly Chimera for Mac OS X)
• K- Meleon (for Windows)

Setting of the development

The roadmap Mozilla stipulated that the project focuses more on individual products and the suite supplied only in the stable branch 1.7 with security updates, on the other hand issued no final, official releases more of the later milestones, developers, however, provides assistance when they are on base of the Mozilla code will bring out their own versions of the suite. The Mozilla project itself will concentrate on the further development of Mozilla Firefox (browser) and Mozilla Thunderbird (email program). The main reason for this change is that the acceptance of individual applications among users was assumed to be higher than that of a complete application suite, inspired by the popularity of Firefox. The evolution of the editor ( Composer) as a standalone application " Nvu " as an external project was discontinued after version 1.0 of Linspire. A more advanced version of the HTML editor provides a fork of NVU with the name KompoZer, which is being developed by Fabien Cazenave.

After the Mozilla Foundation announced that the support of the suite is set, some former Mozilla developers have come together to develop the Mozilla suite, and so continue the program under the name of SeaMonkey in the form of an Internet suite. After the Mozilla Foundation had the name SeaMonkey registered as a trademark, was made on 2 July 2005, the official announcement of the project. On 30 January 2006 the first stable version 1.0 was released. The current version 2.23 was released in December 2013.