Mozilla, Return of the Lizard
http://www.ccnmag.com/index.php?sec=mag&id=295

Internet Explorer Limbo

In May 2003, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 will be the final 'standalone' installation version of their browser. "Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS," they said. That means countless people are stuck with this version until Microsoft's next operating system, Longhorn, is released. Rumor has it, that won't be until late 2005, if not later. And, of course, they'll all need to upgrade to Longhorn to use it. But what good alternatives are there? Mozilla, for one.

The Lizard Goes Open Source

On January 22, 1998, Netscape Communications, Inc. openly released the source code -- the human readable recipe -- to its popular Web browser, Netscape Navigator. This was a rather surprising move, and one many attributed to Microsoft's default inclusion of Internet Explorer in its operating systems, which had quickly eaten away at Netscape's market share.

Mozilla has come a long way since it stomped its way into the Open Source realm. It was awarded "Best of 2003" in the Web browser category by PC World magazine, and was called "Beyond Bliss" by Time magazine. Forbes called it "a breath of fresh air compared to [Internet] Explorer." Its market share has grown from practically nothing a few years ago to anywhere between 5 percent and 30 percent, depending on whom you ask. That doesn't sound like much, but when you consider how many people are actually on the Internet, that's anywhere between 40 and 250 million people.

The trip hasn't been easy, though. It took a few years for developers to catch on and help clean up what was there. By mid-2000 they delivered what could be considered a 'production-quality' browser, but it ran very slowly and still had some bugs. Most people stuck with IE or the old Netscape 4 version they had been using.

In the summer of 2002, version 1.0 finally hit the streets. But only a year later, AOL (who had bought Netscape Communications), decided to pull the plug on Netscape. They signed a deal with Microsoft to use Internet Explorer in their products, and thus ended the so-called "browser wars." For the time being, at least...

Fortunately, AOL didn't leave the Mozilla developers empty handed. They invested $2 million in the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit that provides organizational, legal and financial support for the project.

More than a browser

Mozilla is more than just a Web browser. It's a suite of Internet tools that include the browser, an HTML Web page editor, an e-mail and Usenet newsgroup reader, and an 'IRC' chat client.

Mozilla is available for a bevy of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, OS/2, HPUX, Solaris, BSD, and others. Mozilla has also been translated to over 50 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

Navigator

The Mozilla browser, called Navigator, includes all the features you'd expect: standard security features, a password manager, a cookie manager, and a file download manager.

It also supports 'tabbed browsing,' which allows you to visit multiple Web pages simultaneously without having multiple windows open. You can even bookmark a group of open tabs, so you can open the same set of pages again later in one fell swoop. Or, set a group of URLs as your default home pages.

A built in pop-up blocker lets you surf without annoying little windows intruding on your space. When a site tries to pop up a window, a small icon appears on Mozilla's status bar, letting you decide whether you want the window to appear. Of course, you can also manage what sites are blocked or not blocked by default.

Similarly, the image manager lets you block images from certain sites, to keep advertising at bay, block offensive photos, or simply speed up the rendering speed on your favorite Web sites.

The form manager lets you record what you've entered into a Web site's online form, so you can quickly pull it up later. Let Mozilla do the typing for you.

For people who share their computer (but don't bother creating separate logins for everyone in the household), you can create profiles, which allow users to keep their preferences, bookmarks and other settings separate from each other.

Tools for Web Developers

Along with being praised as one of the most standards-compliant browsers, Mozilla includes built-in tools that help Web site developers do their job: DOM Inspector, a tool that can be used to inspect and edit the live Document Object Model of any Web document or XUL (Extensible User-interface Language) application, and Venkman, which provides a powerful JavaScript debugging environment.

Composer

The normal mode of Mozilla's built-in HTML editor is 'WYSIWYG': what you see is what you get. Spacing of your page, due to images, tables and other elements, looks almost exactly like you'd see it in the Navigator component. Outlines are drawn around tables and images, allowing you to resize them with your mouse.

In HTML mode, each HTML tag on a page is shown as a little icon. It's as if those invisible little tags have crept right onto the page. A little "IMG" tag appears within each image. An "A" (for 'anchor') appears to the left of each link. And "TD" appears at the top left of each HTML table cell. Double-clicking on these links lets you change their attributes (like, where an "a href" anchor should link to).

There's also an HTML source mode, where you can hand-edit the HTML like you would with Notepad, as well as a preview mode, that shows you the rendered page right in the composer window.

When you're done, you can publish your finished work to your Web-hosting provider via FTP or HTTP.

The E-mail Client

Mozilla's e-mail client includes some top-notch features, too. It has a built-in junk mail control that helps filter your spam. It's 'adaptive' -- it uses the Bayesian classification method, which requires that you first train it by showing it a bunch of mail that is junk, and then a bunch of mail that is not. Then, you let it auto-classify new mail for you. If Mozilla makes any mistakes, you can correct them, and it learns from it.

Mozilla lets you manage your mail with labels and mail views -- color-code your mail to help prioritize it, and sort your mail with views to help you get through it more quickly. You can read mail from multiple ISP accounts with Mozilla, too.

Lighter Applications for the Weight-Conscious

One of the biggest complaints about Mozilla has been that it's slow. While newer versions (like the recently released version 1.6) are much faster than before, some people still want as little 'bloat' as possible. Luckily for them, there's Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird. Firebird is a small, light and fast Web browser, based on Gecko, the part of Mozilla that actually renders Web pages. It doesn't include e-mail, HTML editing or other features you don't need to just browse the Web. Thunderbird is a standalone e-mail and newsgroup client.

Themes and Extensions

If you're bored with the way your browser looks, the Web site themes.mozdev.org contains dozens of themes or skins for Mozilla-based browsers. There are even projects to turn Mozilla into a locked-down, 'kiosk'-style public access terminal.

The Web site extensionroom.mozdev.org has a collection of extensions for Mozilla, such as mouse-gesture support (go back a page by simply shoving the mouse to the left, reload a page by moving the mouse in a little circle, etc.), auto-scrolling for hands-free reading, search engine toolbars, and even a set of card games that run right in the browser.

Download it Today

The latest version of Mozilla, plus tons of other information about the project, the software, and the foundation, are available at www.mozilla.org. If you'd rather purchase the CD version, you can get a copy for as little as $3 at store.mozilla.org. Finally, for all the latest news, as well as some great articles on Mozilla, check out the mozillaZine at: www.mozillazine.org.

Bill Kendrick is the president of the Linux Users' Group of Davis www.lugod.org, and writes cell phone games for a living. He can be reached at: bill@newbreedsoftware.com.


- posted by sankarshan @ 3/04/2004 05:23:00 AM