Mozilla Milestone 1.0: the Review
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Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you know what Mozilla is in general. For those of you in the dark, check out the overview provided by Mozilla for a decent breakdown of the project. The purpose of this review is to assess the win32 port of Mozilla 1.0 and its immediate successors (1.1a and .1b) as a milestone in the development of what may prove to be the greatest challenger to the Internet Explorer empire. We'll consider the pros and cons of Mozilla's core renderer, its implementation (Navigator), Mail, Chatzilla (an IRC client), and the bundle as a whole. This is going to be more than a "did it make me happy enough not to use Internet Explorer" review. We're also going to take this opportunity to assess Mozilla's own stated
goals and their progress in achieving them. We'll also consider the viability of a Mozilla-like project in today's world.
Introduction
On June 5, 2002, Mozilla released version 1.0 of their software, which includes a browser, a mail and newsgroup client, an IRC client and some JavaScript debugging tools. The Mozilla.org staff is making a statement with this release--their product is "Ready for Prime Time." Are they correct? Let's find out.
Mozilla 1.0. When you first heard it, you thought, 'finally!' It sounds exciting, doesn't it? It should. For the first time in Mozilla's long history (4.5 years from conception to 1.0), a browser wasn't released with "beta" or "alpha" attached to it. The single largest open-source project since Linux has one ambition: Topple Microsoft's browser monopoly by producing a browser suite built around a better core renderer, christened "Gecko". The renderer is the heart of any browser and many other web-enabled programs. It is what converts the source files into the pretty pictures, animations, sounds and interactive experiences, which are what end users care most about.
Mozilla is not really a browser. Yes, you read that correctly. Mozilla is an open-source project to develop a standards compliant browsing experience. At least originally, the theory was that the renderer and the outer layer (interface) should be two different projects. Mozilla was, in theory, targeted towards the former--the group was to produce a renderer, and not an end-user product. In that spirit, there will be consumer products based on the Gecko renderer (for example, Chimera is a MacOS X native Cocoa browser that uses Gecko as its renderer). The 1.0 is meant as an indication to consumer product developers that the source code is ready for use in such a product.
That said, you can go and download a software package called Mozilla 1.0, and Netscape 7.0 will likely be just a slight redressing of the 1.x branch of Mozilla, renderer, Navigator, et alia. Yet, as previously alluded to, the question remains as to whether or not the browser interface was really to be a focus for the Mozilla project. Some users will tell you that the "whole package" is meant solely to provide content developers a chance to work with the renderer and basic component to see how it affects their designs, and to give power users a chance to work with the "Next Big Thing" (and keep the bug squashing moving right along). Consider that there will be no technical support for this software outside community-based support, such as you would find in the
Software Colloquium or at Mozilla.org itself. In theory, Netscape Navigator is the finished, polished product, not Mozilla.
This review is based primarily on the Mozilla 1.0 release build 2002053012 for Windows 32-bit operating systems. This is the official, non-beta win32 Mozilla release out there. You can get it (or a more recent version) here. One of the beautiful things about open-source products such as this, though, is that you can freely modify the source code and make your own build of the software to suit your specific needs. While many Ars readers do this, the average power-user will not, so we will skip over the build process and focus on the pre-compiled program itself.
Just to be clear: Mozilla released version 1.1a of their browser on June 11th, less than a week after the release of version 1.0. Version 1.1b was released a little more than a week ago. Since version 1.1 is still in it's "beta" stage, this review will focus almost exclusively on Mozilla 1.0, making notes to 1.1 where particularly relevant. It's interesting to see how quickly development is moving along, and you can find out more about Mozilla's current and future plans by taking a look at their road map.
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