Mozilla Application Suite |
The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla, marketed as the Mozilla Suite, and code named SeaMonkey) is a free software, Cross-platform internet suite, whose components include a web browser, an email client and news client, an HTML editor, and an IRC client. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by America Online. 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:
Versions 6 and 7 of the Netscape (web browser) suite were based on the Mozilla Suite. The last official version will be 1.7.x, as Mozilla Foundation is now focusing on the development of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. The suite will be unofficially superseded by SeaMonkey, a community-driven internet suite that is based on the same source code.
=History and development=
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 the large parts of 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 stardard-complicance.
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 General Public License and Mozilla Public License). 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) layout engine.
According to the Mozilla development roadmap published at ). 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 , and that its version numbers will start at 1.0 .
=Features=
Mozilla is an all-in-one internet suite that contains many functionalities used in the internet.
==Usability and accessibility==
Mozilla supports 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 engine) search for apple . When a user enters words into Mozilla s address bar without a search keyword (or with the goto keyword), Mozilla automatically redirects the user to the first result yielded by a Google search for the words.
For the mail and newsgroup component, the built-in Bayesian filtering e-mail spam filter can effectively filter out unwanted email spam after a period of training.
==Customizability==
Mozilla introduced the extension (Mozilla), 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. There is even a [http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.phpid=351 Wikipedia editors toolbar] available for download.
One can view the extension system as a ground for experimentation, where one can test new functionalities. Occasionally, an extension becomes part the official product (for example MultiZilla, an extension which added tabbed browsing to Mozilla, eventually became part of 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 Update website offers many themes for downloading. Beyond adding a new theme, users can customize Firefox s interface by moving and manipulating its various buttons, fields, and menus, and likewise by adding and deleting entire toolbars.
Additionally, Mozilla stores many hidden preferences that users can access by typing often lurk hidden in the about :config menu.
==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, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, Document Object Model, MathML, Document Type Definition, Extensible Stylesheet Language and XPath.
Mozilla also supports PNG images and variable transparency, (which Internet Explorer will not support fully until the not-yet-released 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 does not, however, yet pass the rigorous Acid2 test for HTML, CSS, and PNG standards support. Work is currently underway both on improving current standards implementation and implementing standards currently unsupported, including Scalable Vector Graphics, APNG, and XForms.
The mail and newsgroup supports POP and IMAP. It also support LDAP address completion. Both reading and writing of HTML emails 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 Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 *Mac OS X *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 File Allocation Table 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 language. Because of the use of DTD and property files for storing the string (computer science)s 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==
Like the Mozilla Suite, Firefox comes with 2 web development tools: a DOM Inspector and a JavaScript Console. The DOM Inspector is not available in any other browser, and the JavaScript Console is more advanced than the consoles available in other browsers. While not installed by default, the tools are available via a custom install.
==Security==
Mozilla was designed with security in mind. Some of its key features include the use of the sandbox (security), 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 [http://secunia.com/product/3691/ 3 unpatched vulnerabilities] in Mozilla with the most serious one marked less critical , versus [http://secunia.com/product/11/ 20] for Internet Explorer, with the most serious one marked highly critical , and [http://secunia.com/product/4932/ 0] for Opera. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no public exploits of the browser since it was launched.
=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 experience that some websites 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=
: Statistics reference: Usage share of web browsers
From 1998 to 2004, the global usage share of Mozilla grew from a negligable amount to about 3%. Its users mainly consist of former Netscape users that don t want the addition of AOL features and technology savvy users who want to keep track of the latest Gecko development.
However, because of the Foundation s plan to switch development focus to standalone applications such as Firefox and Thunderbird, many new features and enhancements are available only to the standalone applications. This, combined with the community marketing effort named Spread Firefox , has been drawing more and more users away from Mozilla since late 2004 when Firefox 1.0 was released. Also, since there will be no more official releases of the Mozilla Suite beyond the 1.7.x series, it is expected to be obsoleted by other browsers.
=References=
=See also=
*Netscape Communicator *Netscape (web browser) *SeaMonkey *List of web browsers *List of email clients *List of news clients *List of HTML editors *List of IRC clients *Comparison of web browsers *Comparison of email clients *Comparison of news clients *Comparison of HTML editors *Comparison of IRC clients *List of Unix programs
=External links=
*[http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ Mozilla Suite - The All-in-One Internet Application Suite]|
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