Section 1.8. The Red Lizard and Its Children

1.8. The Red Lizard and Its Children

Last time we looked at Netscape, back in 1998, it had just open sourced its code to form the foundations of a new web browser, to be called Mozilla. So what happened to Mozilla?

The code was opened, and lots of developers began poring over it. Very quickly, a big problem became obvious: the Netscape code that was supposed to be the base of Mozilla was a total mess. Netscape developers had worked frantically for years, pulling all-nighters fueled by pizza and cola, and the programming code consequently was enormous, complex, and unwieldywhat developers call "spaghetti code." After some time had been spent trying to rework the code, a decision was made: almost all of the old code had to be jettisoned, and the browser had to be rewritten from scratch, in a more structured, organized, and correct way.

Along the way, the Mozilla logo changed as well. In the early days of Netscape, Mozilla was a cartoonish green lizard. The new Mozilla was more serious, more purposeful, and definitely no cartoon. A new red lizard took the place of the old logo (you can see the original in [click here]; the new one is shown in [click here]), making it obvious that this was one project not to be trifled with.

Time passed. Years, in fact. Every once in a while, a new test release of Mozilla was announced, prefaced by the letter "M" to indicate a new milestone release. M3, the first real milestone release under the new codebase, appeared on March 19, 1999, while the last release to start with an M, M18, came out on October 12, 2000. After that, a more conventional numbering scheme was used, beginning with 0.6 in December 2000.

Mozilla 0.6 was usable on the Linux operating system (I began using it at around that time on Linux, and while it was buggy, it worked). However, on Windows it was really problematic, with numerous and serious bugs, stability issues, and incomplete features. Unfortunately, AOL made a bad decision at that time. Netscape 4 was still the version in wide circulation, and that browser went all the way back to 1997to the original code that the Mozilla project had rejected as impossible to use. AOL was getting a bit nervous: almost four years had passed, and Netscape was still at Version 4, while IE was already at Version 5.0. It was time for a new release of Netscapenow!

To understand the course AOL took, you must understand that since Mozilla is an open source project, no one "owns" its code. The code is available to anyone to use, as long as they follow the requirements of the software license that governs that code (the Mozilla Public License, or MPL). Essentially, anyone can grab the code for Mozilla, make some changes, and re-release the new browser; however, the program code, comprised of the original source plus any changes, must be released and made available to everyone else to use as well. For example, say I decide to release my own Mozilla. I download the code, make my changes, and release the newly rechristened Scottzilla. You can then take Scottzilla, change the code, and release it as Readerzilla, and so on. All this is legal, even encouraged.

So, AOL owned Netscape, but it realized that it needed to make a clean break from the past and Netscape 4. In addition, AOL wanted the new Netscape to have a higher version number than IE's 5.0. The solution? AOL took the M18 version of Mozilla (even though Mozilla developers themselves labeled the browser as not yet ready for general use), made some changes, added a bunch of AOL marketing junk, and released it as Netscape 6.0. Big mistake.

Netscape 6 was not ready for prime time, because Mozilla wasn't yet ready for prime timeespecially for Windows, where a tremendous amount of work still needed to be done. The reviews for Netscape 6 were dismalInfoWorld's November 26, 2000 review was titled "Netscape strikes out with Navigator 6.0"and many of Netscape's loyal users, who had been waiting years for a major upgrade to their favorite browser, were so disappointed that they finally gave up and switched to IE (which was a shame, since it wouldn't be long before Mozilla 1.0 was ready).

Work continued on Mozilla, and it steadily got better and better, with increased stability, innovative new features, and clever user-interface changes. By the time Version 0.9 was released, it was still buggy, but it was obvious that something great was taking shape. AOL, again displaying a bit of poor judgment but determined to put the debacle of Netscape 6.0 behind it, took Mozilla 0.9.2.1, tweaked it a bit, and released it as Netscape 6.1. Reviews were a bit better (eWeek's was titled "Netscape 6.1 DeliversKind Of," which wasn't what one could call a ringing endorsement), but it was hardly a success.

Finally, the big day arrived: June 5, 2002, the day that Mozilla 1.0 was released to the world. Reviews were very positive, as this excerpt from the June 10, 2002 issue of eWeek demonstrates:

Finally, Mozilla 1.0 is ready. The much-anticipated open-source browser has left the long road of beta testing and is finally ready for regular use, providing not only an easy-to-use and powerful browser but also a highly extensible Web platform.

In eWeek Labs' tests of Mozilla 1.0, which was released last week and is available free at www.mozilla.org, we were impressed with almost all aspects of the browser, from its user configuration options to its usability features to its excellent mail client.

Mozilla is still very much active and in development today; at the time of this writing, 1.7.3 is the current release, with work progressing on 1.8. (Netscape versions based on Mozilla are also still being released; the current release is Netscape 7.2.) However, almost from the first release, a few valid complaints were made about Mozilla. Most importantly, Mozilla, though coded far better than Netscape, is still a large, monolithic product, with not only a browser but also an email program, an address book, and a web page editor in the package. Consequently, Mozilla is often slow to open, sometimes a bit slow to run, and certainly overrun with myriad configuration options that overwhelm a lot of users.

In response to these concerns, a new project was born. In the same way that Netscape's code was the basis for the new and better Mozilla project, Mozilla's code became the basis for a new and better project: Phoenix, a lighter, simpler to use product focused solely on browsing the Web. In September 2002, three months after Mozilla 1.0 was released, Phoenix 0.1 became available for download. It was quite usable for a product only at Release 0.1, but that really wasn't surprising, as it was based on the stable and well-tested Mozilla 1.0.

Work continued on Phoenix, but then a bump in the road appeared. Phoenix Technologies, a company that makes the BIOS (the software that first loads when a computer boots) for a wide variety of manufacturers, complained that the name used for the web browser violated its trademarks. Consequently, the name of the Phoenix browser was changed to Firebird for the 0.6 release on May 17, 2003.

In a case of "out of the frying pan and into the fire," that name didn't work either. The Firebird project had been working for years on an open source database, and they weren't very happy that another open source project, this one backed by the well-known Mozilla Organization, had co-opted its name. It was time for another name change, and so, after careful searching and thought, Firefox became the new name of the 0.8 release, which took place on February 9, 2004.

As 2004 progressed, so did work on Firefox. The browser just kept getting better and better, and the hype really started to spread about this new, innovative browserthe one that would finally be able to take on Internet Explorer and win. In this case, however, there was some truth to the hype, as Firefox really was that good. The 1.0 release, on November 9, 2004, was greeted with celebration by Internet users all over the world, stories and reviews of praise in the media, and ten million downloads in a little over a month.

What's more, IE began to see its share of the browser market drop for the first time in, well, ever. In less than a month, IE dropped 5%, and Firefox filled in that gap. In other words, in less than 30 days, Firefox captured 5% of the usage on the Web, an astounding accomplishment. Clearly, there's a new browser on the sceneone that excites users because it offers something new: a secure, innovative, easy-to-use browsing experience. All hail Firefox!