programming_firefox.pdf

Most people say the World Wide Web was “born” in the spring of 1993, when Jon
Mittelhauser and Marc Andreesen, working out of the University of Illinois, developed
what would become the first widely acceptable graphical interface to the Internet.
The software was known as Mosaic, and its widespread acceptance provided the first
indication that the Internet was something that could interest (and provide value to)
business users and the public.
Marc Andreesen went on to start Netscape Communications Corporation, a com-
pany that focused on the commercialization of the Netscape Navigator browser. In
1998, Netscape turned development of the browser over to the open source commu-
nity in the form of the Mozilla Organization. The Mozilla community rewrote the
Netscape code base and released the first commercial product in the form of
Netscape 6.
The browser was, unfortunately for Netscape, technically and commercially disap-
pointing. Netscape continued to support Mozilla-based browsers through 2003,
when America Online (which owned Netscape) shut down operations, leaving the
Mozilla organization on its own to continue development and commercialization of
the browser code.
1
www.it-ebooks.infoThe Mozilla browser was actually a suite of applications that incorporated both a
browser and an email and newsreader client. To reduce the perceived “bloat” of the
suite, Mozilla decided to break the browser portion out of the suite.
The initial browser was referred to as Phoenix, was renamed Firebird, and finally was