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General Information, Firefox, and ThunderbirdQ: What is "The Andrew Turnbull Mozilla Network?"
A: This is a website devoted to general and historical information, advocacy, and resources regarding specific Internet software, concentrating on the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It is part and parcel of The Andrew Turnbull Network, my personal website.
Q: Why, oh why, did you create this site?
A: Probably a variety of intertwined factors, to be perfectly honest, stemming from my original interests in computers and Internet technology seeded long ago. I overwhelmingly preferred Netscape Navigator to Microsoft Internet Explorer in the "browser wars." I want to see the Mozilla (née Netscape) browser succeed in this day and age, so creating a website of related content seemed to me the least that I could do. Over the years, I accumulated a fair amount of knowledge and assorted information that I saw fit to share with others. Besides, it's a lot of fun!
![[Mozilla Firefox screenshot]](fxshot-small.png)
A: Mozilla Firefox is a web browser. It is free, secure, technologically advanced, and available for several platforms. Firefox uses a rendering engine known as "Gecko."
![[Mozilla Thunderbird screenshot]](tbshot-small.png)
Q: What is Mozilla Thunderbird?
A: Mozilla Thunderbird is an e-mail and newsgroup client program. While it is a separate program from Firefox, it complements it quite nicely and is for all intents and purposes the e-mail "part" of Mozilla, for those familiar with Netscape Communicator terminology. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is also free, secure, technologically advanced, and available for several platforms.
Q: What other Mozilla software products are there?
A: The Mozilla application suite (often referred to as just "Mozilla"), now developed as a volunteer project as SeaMonkey. For more information on the Mozilla application suite and SeaMonkey, scroll down.
Camino, a standalone web browser developed exclusively for
Macintosh computers running Mac OS X. Advantages Camino has over the
Mozilla application suite or Firefox include an OS X-native "Cocoa"
user interface and improved performance.
Bugzilla, bug-tracking software intended for use in software
development.
In addition there are a large number of other major and minor browsers, many developed outside of Mozilla.org, that use the same technology as Mozilla Firefox as their basis.
Q: What is the Mozilla Organization/Foundation/Corporation?
A: The Mozilla Organization started in 1998 as an informal group within Netscape concerned with development of the next Netscape browser, which was being developed as an open-source product.
This arrangement continued until July 2003, when AOL (in their infinite wisdom) dissolved the Netscape development team. Some of the assets were spun off and the Mozilla Organization was promptly reorganized as the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization.
In August 2005, a bit more corporate reorganization resulted in the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the still-extant Mozilla Foundation set up for financial reasons, and now responsible for the development and promotion of Firefox and Thunderbird. As if that wasn't complicated enough, other software (including SeaMonkey) remains under the scope of the Foundation only.
Fortunately, these distinctions are not important enough for most people to need to care about.
![[Browser tree]](browser_tree.gif)
Q: What is the history and/or genealogy of Mozilla Firefox?
A: Mozilla Firefox can be traced to the legacy of Netscape Communications Corp., which in October 1994 released the first public version of Netscape Navigator, the innovative web browser that brought the world wide web into the mainstream.
"Mozilla" was originally the codename for the Netscape Navigator web browser software (hence, a notation in the user agent string) and was also the name of the lizard that was Netscape's mascot in its early days.
On March 31, 1998, Netscape openly released the source code to its browser for the first time. This roughly coincided with the beginning of work on its next-generation browser, which henceforth became known as the Mozilla project.
After extensive development (during which the existing Netscape Navigator/Communicator code was virtually rewritten entirely), a number of alpha-grade software builds were released under the "Mozilla" name. These Mozilla application suite releases, originally intended for use by developers, served as the basis for Netscape 6 and Netscape 7, and ultimately developed into the SeaMonkey releases of today.
A companion project, originally called Phoenix and going through several codenames before finalizing on "Firefox" in February 2004, developed from the Mozilla application suite codebase in 2002 with the intention of creating a standalone web browser with size and performance advantages. As it ultimately developed from it and has a feature set very similar to that of early Navigator releases from Netscape's heyday, Mozilla Firefox can logically be considered a direct descendant of the original Netscape Navigator browser.
Be sure to see the Visual Browser History for a more in-depth look at the development and transition between Netscape 4.x and Mozilla Firefox!
A: In addition to being downloadable for free, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird are available on commercially-pressed CD-ROMs. Comprehensive printed manuals (or "Guidebooks") have been published for both the Mozilla application suite and Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, although neither appear to be available any more from the Mozilla Store.
Note: I ordered a Firefox 1.5 CD and was slightly disappointed. For some reason Firefox and Thunderbird now ship on individual discs, even though they could easily fit together on a single CD-ROM with room left over. Furthermore, there was nothing else on the CD aside from the "en-US" versions of Mozilla Firefox...by contrast, an official Mozilla 1.7 CD-ROM I have from a couple years earlier included Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, Bugzilla, and plenty of source code as well. At least it shipped quickly...my Mozilla 1.7 CD took 41 days to arrive!
Q: What are the system requirements for Firefox and other Mozilla software?
A: Approximate minimum system requirements for running Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, or SeaMonkey are as follows:
The requirements I list here may differ from those provided with official Mozilla documentation, in part because I'm more interested in stating actual compatibility requirements than reiterating the minimum specs for hardware and software configurations to be officially "supported," and in part because they may well have changed since the last time I updated them!
Some individuals have reported success with running Mozilla or Firefox on systems with specifications less than the printed specifications, and RAM can sometimes compensate for processor power to some degree. For what it's worth, I even found myself able to install and run Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 0.9 on an 80486-based PC with only 8 MB of RAM (running Windows 95), but performance was far too sluggish to be usable, let alone practical.
Q: Will Mozilla Firefox or Mozilla Thunderbird run on Windows 95 or other older versions of Windows?
A: Firefox 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5 will both run on Windows 95, under minor conditions: Version 2.30.4265 or greater of the system file OLEAUT32.DLL (implemented in both the Windows Library Update and Visual Basic 6.0 run-time files; take your pick) is all that's needed. Finally, there's a chance that you may need to update still other files (such as OLE32.DLL) in order to run Mozilla Firefox (or Thunderbird) on pre-OSR 2.x versions of Windows 95; just install the DCOM95.EXE update in these cases.
Some people claim that you need Internet Explorer (!) installed to run Mozilla Firefox. This is not true and practically defeats the purpose of using Windows 95 (with its lack of mandatory IE tie-ins) itself; although these updates will be already present on your system if you have IE 5 or other late '90s Microsoft software installed.
(Thanks to Mark Odell for expounding slightly on this topic!)
Unfortunately, Mozilla Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 are in fact incompatible with Windows 95: Thanks to a small Unicode API change made in development, the browser immediately freezes or crashes upon startup (Firefox) or when selecting certain messages to view (Thunderbird). This bug does not affect SeaMonkey 1.1 (based more or less on the same code) and could presumably be fixed, but given the amount of attention the Mozilla developers give to Windows 95 nowadays (which is to say, none at all) I don't count on it. For this reason, I would recommend other Windows 95 users stick with Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.
For convenience, here are direct FTP download links for the "en-US" versions of Firefox 1.5.0.12 (4.9 MB) and Thunderbird 1.5.0.14 (6.1 MB).
Links: Bug 346290, Bug 353537.
A: Unfortunately, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird are not available for Mac OS 9.2.2 or earlier versions. Mozilla's Macintosh software development began to focus exclusively on Mac OS X around December 2002 (a bit prematurely if I may say so myself), when Firefox (then called Phoenix) was in its infancy and before it even began to be made available for the Mac. Although some unofficial Mac builds of the browser were created before the first "official" Mac OS X version was released with Mozilla Firebird 0.6, to the best of my knowledge these were made for OS X only.
Its predecessor, the Mozilla application suite, was made available for the "classic" Mac OS through version 1.2.1. This version is compatible with Mac OS 8.5 to 9.2.2. Netscape 7.02, meanwhile, was the last Netscape-branded browser made for the OS, derived from an earlier codebase equivalent to Mozilla 1.0.2.
Although official development of Mozilla releases for Mac OS 9.2.2 and earlier versions was discontinued in early 2003, unofficial builds of the software for this platform continued to be compiled and made available through Mozilla 1.3.1. One of the most popular ports of Mozilla 1.3.1 for "classic" Mac OS is available from WaMCom.
For Mac OS 8/9 users who would prefer cutting to the chase, though, here's a direct FTP download link for Mozilla 1.2.1 (15 MB).
Q: Why do I see a generic Windows logo on the title bar and taskbar when running Mozilla Firefox on Windows 95, 98, or ME?
![[Portion of Firefox window showing Windows icon]](firefox-winicon.gif)
A: This is a known bug affecting Firefox 1.0.x and below when run on Windows 9x: Rather than displaying Firefox's own proper icon, the title bar and taskbar will display a generic Windows icon instead. The bug does not compromise functionality in any way, although it can be quite annoying and arguably "cheapens" the appearance of the software.
This minor problem can be solved through the following action:
![[Portion of Firefox window showing Firefox icon]](firefox-firefoxicon.gif)
Alternatively, you may wish to fix this problem by simply installing the so-called "Firefox Windows 98 icon fix" icon pack from mozdev.org instead. This icon pack essentially automates the aforementioned procedure, plus installs a couple of extra icons for other windows (such as the downloads manager) as well.
This bug has been resolved in Mozilla Firefox 1.5, so it's something of a moot point now.
A: The menus on the Windows version of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and higher have a relatively flat appearance, with the individual menu entries widely spaced, as in the depiction at left.
This change was allegedly made to more closely emulate the appearance of the "Luna" interface of Windows XP. However, the new menu appearance does not mesh as well with the user interface of previous versions of Windows or (presumably) the classic interface of Windows XP, and due to the wider menu spacing you may have to rearrange your Bookmarks to avoid seeing scroll arrows. Fortunately, it is not difficult to revert the menus back to the three-dimensional appearance employed by Firefox 1.0.x and earlier. Directions for doing so are available here, and involve creating or editing a text document titled userchrome.css and located in the chrome subfolder of the profile folder, which by default is probably placed in one of the following locations:
A: By default, most versions of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird for Windows prior to 1.5 have custom-drawn menus that closely emulate the appearance of menus in Office 97 or Windows 98, where a 3D border is drawn around items on the menu bar as you hover the pointer over them and the menu takes on the appearance of a depressed button when clicked:
![[Windows 98-style menus]](win98-type-menus.gif)
Using the same tricks as those stated above for reverting the appearance of menus in Firefox 1.5 or higher to that of earlier versions, it is possible to hack and configure the menus to take on the appearance of default menus in Windows 95 or NT 4.0, where menu items do not change appearance until selected and are highlighted when clicked:
![[Normal, Windows 95-style menus]](win95-type-menus.gif)
Create or edit a text document titled userchrome.css located in the chrome subfolder of the profile folder (the default location of which is available here; substitute "thunderbird\" for "mozilla\firefox\" if appropriate), containing this code (rename the file as userchrome.css if not present; otherwise copy-and-paste the code into the file).
This code is modified from that provided for reverting Firefox 1.5's menus to the appearance of previous versions. The "Popups" section of the code is probably relevant only for Firefox 1.5 and higher, and could otherwise be omitted. I have tested this out with Firefox 1.5.x, Thunderbird 1.0.6, and Thunderbird 1.5.x. It should work on the Mozilla suite, SeaMonkey, and Netscape 7 too, adjusting the profile folder location as necessary, although it may be desirable to remove the lines not directly pertaining to things like the number of pixels used for margins and padding to prevent the toolbar from changing from the default proportions.
A: By default, Firefox 2 places an individual close button on each tab, making it very easy to close a tab by mistake when switching to it with the mouse. Fortunately, it's not difficult to revert the tab bar to the behavior of earlier versions (which I find much more convenient myself), although it requires a little tweaking:
Another consequence of the changes to tabbed browsing in Firefox 2 is that by default, tabs begin to scroll after a limited number of them are loaded; rather than progressively shrinking and running off the edge of the screen as in Firefox 1.5. While I have yet to locate a tweak that exactly reverts this behavior, the following settings (courtesy of Neil Rudish) should allow 32 tabs to be opened before scrolling sets in:
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Mozilla application suite, SeaMonkey, and Netscape 6/7Q: What is the Mozilla application suite?
A: The Mozilla 1.x application suite, one of the products released by Mozilla and usually referred to as "Mozilla" proper, was a free, secure, cross-platform, and full-featured suite of integrated applications consisting of a web browser, e-mail and newsgroup client, Composer, a WYSIWYG HTML editor; and Chatzilla, an IRC chat client. This was the flagship Mozilla product prior to the advent of Firefox and Thunderbird 1.0 in 2004, and was similar to the feature set and appearance of Netscape 4.x, 6.x, and 7.x. It used the Gecko rendering engine.
A: SeaMonkey is both the original codename to the Mozilla application suite (when styled as "Seamonkey" without the camel-case appellation) and also the proper name for new releases of the software, now developed as a volunteer project.
A: Once upon a time, the Mozilla application suite was developed concurrently with its newer Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird brethren, although by late 2003 most actual internal development work was being concentrated into Firefox and Thunderbird only.
This came to an end of sorts in March 2005. A formal announcement stated, in essence, that Mozilla 1.8 (which had been under development) would not be released as such. Mozilla 1.7 would be the final "official" application suite branch, and any future updates marketed under the Mozilla name would be limited to 1.7.x maintenance updates.
![[SeaMonkey logo]](seamonkey96.png)
This news did not prove to be the end of the Gecko-based application suite, however. Development of what previously would have been Mozilla 1.8 continued as a community effort under a different name, SeaMonkey, adopting the logo at right in December 2005. SeaMonkey 1.0 was released in late January 2006, with version 1.1 following a year later.
SeaMonkey 1.x provides a direct upgrade for users of the Mozilla application suite and includes a variety of changes and new features backported from Mozilla Firefox, including drag-and-drop reordering of tabs. Suite users can also consider switching to Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, which are actively developed, have a few advantages of their own, and are quite popular.
A: In terms of technical code, Netscape Navigator and Communicator 4.x and earlier versions have little or nothing in common with the much more modern products that bear the Mozilla name. Netscape 6 and 7, though, were essentially releases of the Mozilla application suite with a different name and logo, additional plugins such as Flash and Java and third-party software bundled with the default package, proprietary features such as the capability of retreiving Netscape webmail in the integrated e-mail client and a fully integrated version of AOL Instant Messanger, and a short list of AOL/Time Warner-related sites in the popup blocker's exemptions list by default. Additionally, Netscape originally provided paid technical support to users of its software while Mozilla originally didn't (although this is no longer the case).
The question of "which I should use," however, has become a moot point: The last maintenance and security updates for Mozilla and Netscape 7 came in 2006 and 2004, respectively, and both have since gotten a bit stale. Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey make for somewhat better options nowadays in this respect.
A: Ah yes, this age old question. For the record: Netscape 6.0 was a glorified beta release from seven years ago. A LOT has changed since then, including approximately 50 successive versions and virtually uncountable changes to the underlying software and codebase. Practically all of the feature, rendering, and performance issues present in this version were resolved ages ago. In fact, the quality of the Mozilla codebase subsequently improved so much that even by version 6.2 Netscape had arguably become a competitive product once again!
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