Let's get one thing straight. Mozilla is not Netscape. To the seasoned mozilla.org developers and the Mozilla developer community, this is a well-known fact. But for the average consumer and computer user, Mozilla and Netscape are sometimes viewed as the same thing. Reading the discussion boards, the mailing lists, and even many recent news articles, it's clear that lots of people don't understand the differences between the two and regularly confuse them, referencing one when they meant the other.
To sort this problem out and clear up some of this confusion and misinformation, let's take a look at what Mozilla is, what Netscape is, and how mozilla.org and Netscape Communications Corporation relate to each product.
Mozilla is a software development initiative that grew out of Netscape's decision to release the source code for their Netscape Communicator web browser. Mozilla refers to the collection of software components and technologies that make up the Mozilla development platform.
|
Also Featured This Week Infinite Extensibililty with XBL  
|
Mozilla software components include things such as the web browser, the mail client, and the chat client. Mozilla technologies include XUL (Extensible User Interface Language) and XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Model).
XUL allows developers using Mozilla to build cross-platform user interfaces using a single unified language instead of having to create separate UIs for each platform. This "UI versatility" allows developers to combine their software development paths for the various platforms (i.e., Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) into one, re-using code that previously would have had to be written separately for each platform.
XPCOM is a technology that allows for cross-platform communication between software components and pieces of code. For example, the piece of code that controls the interaction of the browser's back button is an XPCOM function call that works exactly the same way across all platforms, whereas before, this code needed to be different for each platform the developers were writing for.
Mozilla.org is the developer community for Mozilla developers, many of whom work for Netscape. (Ah, here's where some folks get confused ... and rightly so.) Netscape, in this instance, is the corporate entity behind the Mozilla project, providing overall direction, funding, and a sense of purpose and control. At the same time, Netscape uses mozilla.org and the developer community around it to leverage their development of Netscape 6, which is a commercial web browser built on top of the Mozilla codebase.
Netscape 6 can be thought of as a branded version of Mozilla with some extra functionality and software components thrown in. For instance, Netscape is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, so AOL has funded the development of a Mozilla-based AOL Instant Messenger client, which is included in the default installation of Netscape 6. This is an example of software that isn't available in the default Mozilla installation, and serves as an important distinction between the two.
Netscape Communications Corporation started out as a company that developed web browsers, the software that allows end users to view the Internet in a graphical way. Their first browser defined the industry standard for how browsers should work, and it was copied by numerous companies, including Microsoft, Sun, and Apple, creating a kind of "browser war" in the late 1990s.
It's important to note that the Mozilla project isn't married to Netscape as closely as some people think. There are hundreds of developers working on Mozilla and Mozilla-based applications who have no communication with Netscape but belong to the Mozilla developer community by contributing their patches, bug fixes, and independently-created software to the overall Mozilla project.
Netscape does not own Mozilla, and if for some reason AOL cut the financial umbilical cord, Mozilla would continue to operate without the slightest of hiccups. This is due to the incredible amount of knowledge sharing and communication that happens on a daily basis in the Mozilla newsgroups and mailing lists. Active developers from all over the world are able to participate in Mozilla development without ever needing to pay a visit to Netscape's Mountainview campus.
|
The biggest competitor in this "browser war" was Microsoft with their Internet Explorer application. Released initially only for the Windows operating system, IE quickly gained dominance in the browser market due to its close coupling with the Windows operating system.
For instance, the reason that IE is so fast on modern computers running Windows 98 or Windows 2000 is that IE is actually loaded into the system memory upon startup. This is an example of how Microsoft is taking advantage of their monopoly in the desktop computer market. It's also an indicator for how they're going to develop future versions of Internet Explorer to act as a platform for all kinds of Internet-based services, many of which will be closely tied to the functionality built into the browser. This, of course, will be a Windows-only set of services, which Microsoft is calling Microsoft .NET.
How does this relate to Mozilla and Netscape? When you look at Internet Explorer and Mozilla from a 30,000-foot view, you can see that many of today's Internet services will benefit greatly from taking advantage of a modern Internet browser and the functionality built into it. This is the future of the Internet: distributed web applications and Internet services built on top of a modern browser.
Currently the only browsers that can support such advanced capabilities are Internet Explorer 5.5 and Mozilla. And since Netscape 6 uses the same codebase as Mozilla, it's likely that Netscape 6 and Netscape 7 will also be strong players in this market. The distinct advantage Mozilla has over IE 5.5 in this emerging web applications market is that Mozilla is inherently cross-platform and can run on just about any operating system of choice.
Microsoft is at a disadvantage here because their browser for each platform they support (Windows and Mac) is developed completely separately using different codebases and different development teams. If you are a web applications developer, which platform would you develop on? Mozilla, which supports nearly 100% of all operating system platforms in use today, or Internet Explorer, which is only available for the Windows platform?
Note that if you chose IE and wanted Mac users to use your web application, you'd likely need to have a separate development team working on that web application because the implementation of your web app would require a different development process.
Mozilla, in this scenario, would allow the web application developer to develop only one instance of their tool, which because of the cross-platform nature of Mozilla would run on all platforms, thus requiring only one development path, not one path for each platform desired.
The added advantage of Netscape (using Mozilla as its codebase) is that any web application or Internet-based service developed for Mozilla will, without much complexity or change, work nicely with Netscape 6. This is the reason the Mozilla team at Netscape decided to scrap the Communicator 4.x code and start over from scratch, to create a true cross-platform browser and related software components.
Pay attention to what Netscape is doing with Netscape 6, watch what Microsoft is doing with IE 5.5 and their Microsoft .NET initiative, and also watch how many innovative web-based applications hit the market over the next year. It's a safe bet that Mozilla and its cross-platform technologies will be the foundation for many of them.
Never before have web application developers had the opportunities now available to them. Mozilla has near-100% support for W3C-recommended standards, making it extremely flexible and robust for highly customized web application development. The source code is available to anyone who wants it, so it's also easy for developers to add in functionality that wasn't thought of by the Mozilla team.
The future of the Internet lies with the web browser as just one component of a new kind of software platform, one that runs on nearly all operating system platforms in use today and whose source code is available to anyone who wants it. The opportunities and potential are simply astonishing.
Imagine a future without the dominance of Microsoft and with the openness of Mozilla. Think about the possibilities a true cross-platform development environment can give you, and you will soon be trolling the Mozilla newsgroups along with hundreds of other excited developers trying to escape the grasp of a Microsoft-owned future.
Cameron Barrett is a Senior Information Architect for Alphanumerica and the creator of CamWorld.com.
Also Featured This Week
Infinite Extensibililty with XBL
Discuss this article in the O'Reilly Network Browsers Forum.
Return to the Mozilla DevCenter.
Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.